Re:A Dying Light
by Twilight PhoenixFyre
Summary: Danté thought he'd died. He certainly deserved it, after everything he'd done. But no. Fate had other plans for him. "Mister? Hey, Mister? Are you okay?" Danté's response was gruff, and brutally honest. "No, brat, I'm not." That didn't stop Lloyd from opening his home to an assassin who had nothing left to lose. / Rated 'T' for violence/language use. Spin-off of Re:A Spatial Tear
1. Chapter 1-1 Part 1

_FINALLY!_

I have had this story floating around in my head and on my computer for years now, and it's been re-written multiple times (hence why it's Re:A Dying Light) as I progressed through the Ripples Trilogy. Thankfully, now that Ripples is done driving me completely and totally psycho, it's time for the Lights cast to do so.

 _This trilogy is a spin-off from the end of Book 2 of the Ripples Trilogy. You do not need to read Re:A Ripple in the Abyss or Re:A Spatial Tear to understand Re:A Dying Light. (All you need to know is the following: Kairi is a walking disaster zone. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. She and Dante were also on opposite sides of the main conflict in Re:ARitA and Re:AST, so Dante's opinions on her are a little iffy. Dante has a replica named Dark who was on Kairi's side. A lot of people who are supposed to be dead aren't.)_

To anyone who followed me over from the Ripples Trilogy: Welcome to Dante's slightly-more-stable if decidedly darker head.

To any new readers looking for the Ripples Trilogy: It's over in the Tales of the Abyss section. Read at your own risk.

Updates will be every Friday plus whenever I feel like handing out extra updates. Cover drawn by yours truly and posted full-size on my DeviantART (you can find me there under Twilight-PhoenixFyre).

I will say this once and once only, because I don't want to have to copy-paste it over and over again (and, be honest, reading chapter-ly disclaimers is boring and gets old real fast): **I do not own Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss, or any associated characters/spells/artes/etc. I do however own my numerous Original Characters, my artwork, and any Original Artes/Spells/etc. Please do not use my characters/artes without permission.** (It will usually be given if asked for.) _(A full list of disclaimers will be posted at the end of the book, when I actually know what all's managed to sneak in here.)_

Now then... enough of that boring stuff.

Enjoy!

* * *

 _"I'd like you if you'd quit treating me like an unintelligent_ mutt _."_ _-Noishe_

* * *

 **Chapter 1.1 - Second Chance  
Part 1**

 _I stopped behind a tree, Arietta's friend long gone already. Firelight danced around the clearing as the battle raged. Sync against Zion, replica against original, with Dark, my own replica, standing nearby to cover his distracted friend's back. Further into the trees where Dark and his friends had come through, Master Ryndor played around with the other three._

 _Rhunön was keeping Asch and Reighn away from Kairi and the monolith._

 _I should have done something._

 _I should have drawn my third gun and killed at least one of them._

 _But I'd left that one back at Eldrant, when I shot the replica of Largo Mohs had ordered created._

 _I should have drawn the other two and started firing on the others, given Zion, Ryndor, and Rhunön support._

 _But I'd dropped one of those after killing a replicated Oracle Knight who dared attack me when Arietta died._

 _And wasn't that a whole other can of worms? Arietta..._

 _So long, I'd dismissed her. So many months, I'd told her that she would move on from me just as she'd moved on from Zion. But the truth was quite simple._

 _Arietta had grown up. And she'd made her choice._

 _I let my mind drift back to the battle in front of me, only to realize that it was over. For Master Ryndor to be so casually perched in the tree like that, for Rhunön to be collecting her coat... Zion was laying on the ground, blood seeping out of a wound in his arm. I glanced around, spotting one of the black and red daggers Sync used on occasion still laying on the ground._

 _Poisoned, most likely. Just like that silver katana of Kairi's, and Dark's white chakrams._

 _Rhunön was gone. Ryndor was leaving, but from the way he dropped to the ground behind me, I knew he'd spotted me._

" _Danté."_

 _I glanced back. Neon green eyes met mine, and Ryndor tilted his head to the side slightly. A silent inquiry. I looked out toward the clearing again, noting the two standing next to the monolith, looking at Kairi. They knew... They knew it was too late._

 _A gentle hand on my shoulder. "Don't let it die without the rest of you again."_

 _That almost-comforting presence was gone in the next instant, and I understood what Ryndor was talking about, because I'd_ felt _the sheer emotion in his words. An uncharacteristic amount of emotion, most would say._

 _But I knew better. Ryndor never actually killed his heart. He just forced down the emotions, to be dealt with later when he was alone. Because the man who'd just told me not to kill my own heart again was the very same who'd taken me in as an infant._

 _I took a wary step forward, just close enough to hear the conversation in the clearing._

" _The only thing that would save even part of her would be to cut her loose, but... If we do that..." Sync stopped and looked over at Jade, wearing an expression that I'd never once seen Zion wear._

 _Because Zion hadn't_ cared _. For_ anyone _._

" _Whoever stays behind will die as well... There's no way to stop the seal from breaking, is there?" Jade asked. I shook my head. No. There wasn't... But Kairi... I looked over at her, remembering a conversation in the gardens outside the palace in Grand Chokmah._

 _Kairi was the kind to give_ anyone _a chance. Perhaps... It would only be fair for me to give her one, as well._

 _Jade called out to Asch, and I dared to glance at his expression. Pain. More pain than I'd thought he could show, to be honest._

 _I stepped forward a bit further, and I knew the moment my replica saw the movement, saw_ me _, because there was only one thing on Auldrant that could rile up the teen known as Dark Daemione._

" _Asch..." Sync called softly. He's spotted Dark's hands shaking._

 _Rage. The replica was enraged... and I was the very reason why._

 _Asch moved over toward Sync and the brown-haired girl... Oh, what was her name? Sopheria? Something like that..._

 _Dark_ reacted _. Drew one of his guns with the speed and precision Ryndor had trained into us both, and pointed it straight at me. I considered stopping._

 _But I'd already made up my mind, hadn't I?_

 _I stepped out of the tree line before stopping. If Dark wanted to shoot me, that was fine. I was going to die one way or another tonight. And what they'd said..._

" _Danté?!"_

 _I wasn't sure if Flick was incredulous, angry, or just tired of fighting. I shot my strongest glare in her direction, since part of the group was over there, then turned it on the three standing over closer to Dark. I doubt it looked much like a glare though. I was tired... oh-so-tired of all of this..._ this _._

" _Get out of here," I ordered, almost startled by how monotonic my own voice sounded._

" _But Kairi—"_

" _I'm going to try to cut her loose," I said, cutting Asch off before glancing at the pile of equipment Ryndor had left behind. I started moving over to it, spotting both a normal katana and the vine-bound one Kairi seemed to favor. "But if I fail, do you really still want to be here when that thing explodes?"_

 _I stopped and knelt, lifting the admittedly-pretty silver katana, and was a bit amazed by how light it was. Just one problem..._

 _I turned around. No one had moved, and I attempted a glare again... Until my gaze caught on Dark's._

 _I forced myself to look into those mismatched eyes. Vibrant green and gold. So different from my dull, dead green. So different... And so far from identical now. Dark was beginning to tan slightly. His hair was less wild, more controlled by the long braid down his back. A much healthier weight than I remember him being a year ago._

 _Good. The princess was taking care of him._

" _Let's go."_

 _Two words from my replica. That's all it took for the rest of them to finally realize that they_ needed _to leave._

 _I watched them go for a few moments, then turned and started walking toward the monolith. Even if I succeeded in cutting Kairi free, I would die. The explosion would kill me, if the energy rebound didn't. It would likely kill Kairi as well, but so long as I pulled her away, her soul would be free to return to her original body._

 _I sighed. So many lessons to learn in so little a time. So many lessons to learn so painfully. I'd long since passed over the boundary that separated assassins from murderers._

 _My death would be a blessing to the world._

 _And as I looked up at Kairi, hanging limply from the Monolith of Syal, I couldn't help but feel like this was just a flimsy last attempt at redemption. This wasn't enough, it would never be enough._

 _But at least I'd be going to the grave with the knowledge that I'd tried._

*-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*

Everything hurt.

He wondered if this was how Kairi had felt, with miasma flooding her system and destroying her from the inside out.

"Mister?"

He took a deep breath, or tried. It was interrupted by a deep, wet cough, and he could _taste_ the blood in his mouth. Damn.

"Hey, Mister? Are you okay?"

He growled a few curses. Good thing most people couldn't speak liger. "No, brat, I'm not," he grumbled before hacking again. This time, he could feel some of that blood on his chin.

"Um, um... Noishe! Noishe, go get Dad!" the kid yelled. Male. Six years old at the most.

A hesitant growl came, and he was mildly surprised to understand it.

"I'm not so sure about this..."

"Noishe!"

Padding footsteps moved away, and the teen took another deep breath before allowing his eyes to open.

Faint green light hit his retinas, and he scrunched his eyes closed again for a moment before blinking, letting them adjust as he looked around.

He was in a... forest? Yes, a forest... Had the exploding monolith simply flung him out into the wilderness that surrounded it?

No. No, wherever he was, it wasn't Auldrant. He could feel around him, but there was nothing to feel. No fonons. Kairi's homeworld? But that couldn't be right either, could it? He was sure that it was a possibility, but he doubted it.

The boy who'd sent his... dog?... off to get his father walked over, and green eyes skimmed over his appearance. Brown hair, reddish-brown eyes, and a bright red shirt. He guessed the boy was about five.

"How'd you get hurt, Mister?" the boy asked, curious as all children his age were. The teen groaned, then proceeded to ignore him and start working on sitting up.

The kid had definitely asked a good question. How _did_ he get hurt? Why did he feel like he was on fire? And how bad was the damage?

"I don't think you should be sitting up, Mister..."

The teen huffed. "Danté."

"Huh?" Erk. Little kids.

"My _name_ is Danté," he reiterated.

"I'm Lloyd!"

Danté made a dismissive gesture, then started checking himself over. It was a painful process, but he was, thankfully, not too badly injured. There was a hole in his chest that was leaking blood, but it didn't appear to be infected—yet—and aside from a few deep cuts, he just had some scrapes and one hell of a lot of bruises.

Looked like who or whatever hadn't wanted him to die had done a rather thorough job of it. Though the hole in his chest was rather concerning, and he needed to get the deeper cuts bandaged.

"Alright, alright, ah'm comin', ya bloody mutt!"

Danté couldn't help but chuckle at the dog-creature's response to the irate man's grumbling.

"Well, come faster and I wouldn't be bothering you so much! I'm not sure that guy's good news and—uh-oh..."

Danté finally got a look at the creature speaking the language so similar to the liger language he'd been raised with, and noted that it was rather far from a liger. White, with green patches, a lithe, more doggish build than any liger, and the largest ears Danté had ever seen on a creature... well, maybe not a cheagle's. But large ears regardless.

Still... "Well, lookie there. Something intelligent."

The dog-creature—Noishe?—turned to look at the rather short man following him. "See?! Can you get Lloyd away from him already?!"

The short man ignored Noishe and ran over to Danté as he tried—and failed—to stand up. "Whoa! Careful there, lad! What's a boy like you doin' all the way out here?"

"Nothing good, I'm sure."

Danté rolled his eyes. "Nah. One time I try to do something good, this is my reward. Hole in my chest, rest of me on fire, and no clue where the hell I've landed," he grumbled.

The three strangers stared at him, until Noishe sat down quite suddenly.

"You can understand me?"

Danté chuckled, though it was a rather dark and not very humorous sound. "I should hope so, seeing as I've been speaking the language since I was a child."

All was silent for a while as Noishe watched Danté attempt standing again. With the short man to help him, Danté managed it, though only barely.

Though, he barely made it to his feet before he found himself with a white and green... whatever... supporting him from the other side. Danté blinked at Noishe for a moment.

"You're staying. If for no other reason than to save me from the insanity of trying to talk to people that don't understand a word I'm saying," Noishe announced. Danté couldn't help but start laughing.

"Trust me, you're not gonna want an assassin around," he replied.

"Hey Mister Danté? Are you talking to Noishe?" Lloyd asked. Danté sighed.

"Yeah, something like that. And it's just 'Danté', kid."

The short man seemed to find this amusing. "Yer not much more than a kid yerself," he muttered. "And mah name's Dirk."

Danté snorted as he watched the five-year-old skipping ahead. "I could give Lloyd nightmares telling him about some of the shit Master Ryndor put me through when I was his age. I'm not a kid, haven't been for years."

Dirk gave him an appropriately concerned look, but didn't leave the teen's side as he started moving, following the hyperactive child who'd apparently found him.

"Where're you from, Danté?" Dirk asked. Lloyd had just stopped and was rocking back and forth on his feet, waiting for them to catch up.

"Nowhere in particular," Danté answered vaguely. If he was right, and this was a new world, he wasn't sure he could pull off being from _anywhere_ , really. "Master Ryndor never settled in any one place, and even after leaving him, I haven't either."

"That's kinda lonely," Lloyd said sadly. Then he perked right back up. "Hey, Dad! Can he come live with us? 'Cause Noishe seems ta like him!"

"I'd like you if you'd quit treating me like an unintelligent _mutt_ ," Noishe said crossly. Danté snorted, both at Lloyd's suggestion and Noishe's complaint.

"I don't think you want me around, kid." Dirk certainly wouldn't, Danté was sure.

Lloyd turned around to walk backwards. "Oh come on! You can't really want to be alone all the time! What's so horrible about you that you don't want to stick around?" he asked.

"Tell him you're a half-elf," Noishe suggested when Danté hesitated. The assassin sighed. Better than nothing...

"It's not so much that I don't want to stay..." Might as well make the kid feel a little better, at least. "It's more a matter of other people not wanting a half-elf hanging around."

Danté was rather amused by the pure shock that took over Lloyd's expression, and he noted the wary look Dirk gave him. Good... Not quite the distrust he'd have received if he'd confessed to being an assassin, but at least it pushed them away. "See? Case closed."

Lloyd suddenly looked upset. "I'm sorry."

Dirk and Danté both froze in surprise, and Lloyd looked up at Danté. "That's why you're alone, isn't it? Because everyone hears 'half-elf' and then pushes you away? It's like with Colette! Every time people find out she's the Chosen, they start holding her at arm's length."

Danté looked over at Noishe, who looked pretty surprised himself, but also proud. The creature looked up at him. "He's a pretty good kid, huh?"

The chuckle that forced its way out of his throat built slowly, oh so slowly, and Danté wondered if maybe he was just dreaming.

Was this supposed to be a second chance? Had some (insane) higher power decided that his attempt at redemption at the Monolith of Syal was worth giving him a second shot?

Danté finally gave in and took his right hand off Dirk's shoulder to reach out and ruffle Lloyd's hair, a faint smile playing at his lips. "Thanks, brat."

* * *

 ** _Fun Fact:_** _While editing this, originally, Dante listed off Selenia as one of the people fighting Ryndor._

 _Then he... forgot her name and called her 'Sopheria'. O.o_

 _Oops. That was corrected, of course, but it's still funny. (Also funny that Dante pulled a flower from a totally different game into this. Less funny that Book 1 of the Roses Trilogy (sequel to both Lights and Ripples) will be taking place in that game.)_


	2. Chapter 1-2 Part 2

The biggest problem in the Ripples Trilogy was finding and replacing all of the greater-than/less-than signs that FFnet devoured when I uploaded chapters.

The biggest problem in the Lights Trilogy is re-underlining all of Noishe's speech. FFnet likes devouring that, too. Which is why it's sometimes hard in the Ripples Trilogy to tell if one of the animals (non-Mieu, that is) is talking-some of the underlining vanished on me and I didn't notice. Hrg.

Whatever.

 _Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday crazy authoress, happy birthday to me~_

And in celebration... extra chapter! (No, you're not crazy, yes, it really is Thursday. December is the only non-NaNo month where I tend to drop a LOT of updates.)

* * *

 _"And, like my mentor before me, I happen to hoard just about everything I can get my hands on. Up to and including obnoxious amounts of_ rocks _." -Dante_

* * *

 **Chapter 1.2 - Second Chance  
Part 2**

The world was still dark. This... was probably a good thing, he mused, laying in the darkness and concentrating on his breathing.

He wasn't quite as pained as he had been the night before, but... He was still trying to get this all straightened out in his head.

The Monolith of Syal.

Cutting Kairi free.

 _Surviving_... Albeit, getting tossed to another world in the process, apparently.

Danté sighed, shifted, and managed to sit up slowly, mentally going over his injuries again. The various scrapes, cuts, bruises... and the less innocuous injuries.

Three puncture wounds. Two of which he'd pulled crystal shards out of, crystal shards that looked to be the same shade of green as the very Monolith he'd been trying to save Kairi from.

The third was too deep, and...

"You got lucky."

Danté jumped, hands shooting out and impacting against a white, furry body before he even registered that it was Noishe.

Noishe yelped as he was shoved over, and Danté didn't bother to shoot him an apologetic look. It was too early in the morning for him to be trying to work around anyone else. As it was...

"What do you mean?" he grunted, looking over the bandages and sitting down again, doing his best not to aggravate the wounds anymore than he already had.

"The shard Dirk said we couldn't risk extracting. It went in the left side of your chest, not the right. It probably would have hit your heart otherwise," Noishe said, apparently not at all bothered by the fact that Danté's first reaction to an unfamiliar voice—or in this case, whine—was to try to kill it.

Lucky.

Heh. If only.

He took a deep breath, hissing a bit as it stretched abused skin that did not want to stretched.

He wasn't going anywhere for a few days, at least, and he had a feeling Dirk wasn't going to appreciate that. Even if Lloyd had tried to offer opening their home to him... well.

Danté might have claimed to be a half-elf, but he wasn't. He was something much, much worse.

"So..."

Uh-oh.

"Spit it out."

"I'm not the best at sensing mana signatures, but I am about ninety percent certain that our lie wasn't... that much of a lie," Noishe said.

Danté frowned.

Uh, _what_?

"I'm human."

"But you feel like a half-elf, mostly... Actually, you feel somewhere between a half-elf and an angel," Noishe told him, sitting down next him. A moment's pause, and then Danté had a white head with oversized ears in his lap. "You could use magic back on your home world, right?"

Danté nodded. "Yeah. Not sure if I'll be able to use it here. No fonons." And _that_ was probably a large part of the dull aching in his entire body. Especially since it was focused in his eyes and fingertips.

The only good news, he mused, was that it was a sudden lack of fonons, and not simply over-abused fonslots. Lack of fonons was survivable, people in the Dawn Age had proven that, albeit through some rather less-than-legal experimentation. Over-abuse of fonslots, though? That could kill, or at the very least, debilitate.

He'd survive this.

What he was going to do with his life, though, that was another problem altogether, and not one he'd managed to solve just yet.

Slinking through the darkness, murdering for money... that was all he'd ever known.

He raised his hand and started running his fingers through Noishe's fur. The big not-liger needed brushed, really... And that was another thing.

"So, what exactly are you?" he asked, hoping to get his mind off his future.

Noishe's ear twitched, and then he whined something that Danté didn't understand. Brown eyes met confused green, and Noishe groaned. "Not an easy one... hrg... Okay, here we go. Spelling game. First letter of each word, unless I have to come up with something else," he said. "Animal, run, sun, heat, insect, sun..." Noishe whined it, and Danté realized it was only _half_ of what he'd said previously.

Arshis. Alright.

Noishe's ears laid flat against his head. Apparently he wasn't enjoying the spelling game, but Danté didn't know what else they could do. "Protect, run, other, town, other... If I'm not mistaken, third letter of haze, other, apple, night."

Ah. Yeah. Zs tended to be annoying.

Protozoan.

Arshis-form protozoan, if he'd gotten that middle growl right.

He ran his fingers through what had been a knot in the protozoan's fur, and wondered... "You don't happen to have a brush laying around?"

Noishe shifted just enough to look at him, then got up and padded off.

What he came back with, Danté was fairly certain was actually _Lloyd's_ brush.

"Um."

"He never uses the damn thing anyway, and it's not like they've gotten one specifically for me, yet. I think Dirk's still hoping I'll go away. It took me _weeks_ to catch up to him and Lloyd after the cliff," Noishe said, dropping back down and plopping his head in Danté's lap. Danté rolled his eyes, choosing not to ask. At least now he had something menial to do while he let his thoughts wander.

He didn't have his guns. He'd left them laying around, and even if he had brought them... Well. No fonons.

He worked his way through Noishe's fur slowly. The protozoan had apparently been in dire need of it, because Danté could _see_ the difference, even in the slowly lightening-morning.

Did he want to see if Dirk would be willing to let him take Lloyd up on his offer? Did he actually want to stay? No. That was an easy one.

But he needed to be armed if he wanted to leave. He needed a weapon of some sort, and some sort of proficiency in it, and he needed new clothes, too. Right now, he was wearing a pair of Dirk's old pants and the bandages, while Dirk was doing what he could to save his clothes.

Danté idly pulled a third mat of white fur off the brush and continued his work, Noishe appearing to have fallen asleep under the rhythmic motions.

So, everything pointed to one thing. Money. He needed some form of money.

He had gald in his wing pack, a lot of it. But would he be able to use his wing pack in a place where there were no fonons? And would his gald get him anywhere?

It was unlikely, but if nothing else, he was sure he had _something_ of fairly high value in his wing pack, if he could just get into it. He'd had a habit of hoarding, after all. Something he'd picked up from Rhunön. She'd always carried an obnoxious amount of _stuff_ in her wing pack, and if he was being honest, he had a feeling she'd never even noticed the few things he'd nicked the last time he'd helped her run inventory.

Still.

Wing pack.

Deciding that he couldn't really do much more for Noishe until the protozoan rolled over on his other side, Danté put the brush down with the mass of fur he'd removed and pulled his bag over. The fact that it was still intact was miracle enough, he supposed, when you considered that he'd been sent to another world altogether, by forces unknown.

Wing pack, wing pack... Ah ha.

He pulled the little device out and tapped the screen edge, not expecting anything.

He was pleasantly surprised when it lit up.

"Huh. There's a neat trick," he muttered. A few more taps, and he had not only a bag of gald sitting next to him, but also a small box he knew was full of precious stones. Already-cut precious stones, at that. Even if he couldn't sell them here, he'd get a good price out of them in any larger city.

Noishe shifted, apparently noticing that he'd gotten distracted from brushing him, and Danté didn't miss the way the protozoan's ears perked up. "Is that a wing pack?"

Huh. So they had these here, too, huh?

"Yeah. I'm a bit surprised this thing's working. I was pretty sure they ran on fonons back home, but..."

"The ones Firheicing and his friends had during the war didn't use mana. Maybe it uses whatever those used?"

Danté blinked a few times.

Firheicing.

That wasn't a liger name. That was a _serpent_ name. Assuming what he'd learned from Kallig, Doba, and Habak had been correct.

Firheicing... "What's Firheicing short for?"

Noishe blinked, then rolled his eyes. "Right. Different world, I'm guessing different naming conventions," he muttered.

"Not really, if I'm right," Danté said. "I'm going to guess it's like serpent names, where they call it as they see it, and then shorten it as much as possible. Like... Hides-in-the-dark-waters went by Hindawa."

Noishe stared at him for a bit before nodding. "Yeah. Fire-heart-ice-wings."

Ha. So the protozoans used serpent naming conventions. Interesting... wait.

"Then, what's Noishe short for?"

He shook his head, ears half-flopping around. "Honestly, it's actually old elven. Something about the wind. I don't even remember my original name anymore. Firheicing gave me the name when he found me because I was still an—" another growl Danté didn't know, dammit, "—form then." Noishe paused, took in the irritated look on Danté's face, and huffed. "Aspen, egg, rain, orange, sun."

Aeros. That helped.

Danté put his wing pack away and pulled the bag of gald over. "So..."

"Shit, where'd you get the gald?"

...No.

No way.

There was no _possible_ way.

He was _never_ that lucky.

"So... Sylvarant uses gald too?"

Noishe stared at him. "Wait, that's from...? Here, put a few coins out, I want to see if..." Danté was already doing it, pulling out coins and laying them out on the floor Noishe had vacated to stand up in shock. "Yup, that's gald alright. Damn, where'd you get that much, though? Then again, you did just say... So you had all this on you when you made the trip from your world? _Nice_..."

Danté blinked a few times.

Okay. So... Sylvarant used the same gald Auldrant did.

He was speechless. There was no possible way he could have gotten that lucky. That was why he'd never gambled anything more than Dark's life. Dark, honestly... he respected the replica for tearing away. For trying to find his own path.

That was a large part of why he'd always left Dark to die, never bothered to finish off the job.

Dark had gotten lucky, time and time again, found people willing to help him out... And...

Danté was aware of the wry smile on his face, but he couldn't help it.

That last time, in the factory... that had to have been Dark's luckiest break ever. Because he'd escaped the factory... and been found by Natalia. The princess and the assassin... who'd have thought?

Dark. Dark had gotten all of his luck.

And... somehow, Danté wasn't angry about that. He was too used to being luckless.

Still... this was the one stroke of luck he couldn't have thought to ask for, and it was going to make his life one hell of a lot easier.

Money made the world go 'round, much as a lot of people might have tried to deny it.

So. He had money. He had valuables he could sell if he needed more, which he _didn't_ —between everything he'd picked up from Noishe and the surprise the protozoan had shown just now, that was probably a good indicator that the coin was worth more here than on Auldrant.

And this was just his travel pouch, the one he pulled out when he needed to buy something from vendors.

This totally disregarded the rest of the gald stashed away in his wing pack.

Not that Dirk really seemed all that interested in gald, beyond what he needed to keep himself and Lloyd fed. Which was why Danté didn't immediately put the little box of jewels away.

He was picking through them, examining them with the faint light seeping through the cracks between the curtains, when Dirk walked into the living room, paused, and snorted.

"Well. I'm glad _someone_ got some use out of Lloyd's brush."

Danté chuckled. "Yeah, Noishe did say something about him never using it," he replied. "I can buy him a new one later anyway. Brushing Noishe gave me something to do this morning to bring me down off the adrenaline high from a nightmare."

Honesty. He must not be very awake yet, if he was blurting things like that out to Dirk.

"What've yeh got there, lad?"

"Well. I figure, you'd probably appreciate payment outside of gald." He lifted a rather pretty emerald to get a better look at it. "And, like my mentor before me, I happen to hoard just about everything I can get my hands on. Up to and including obnoxious amounts of _rocks_."

Dirk frowned. "Rocks?"

Danté held his left hand out, fisted and palm-down, in an obvious request to drop something. Dirk held a hand under, and he dropped the three other gems he'd been looking at in the dwarf's hand.

There was a moment of silence as Danté continued to inspect the emerald.

Roughly the same shade as his eyes... as _Dark_ 's green eye.

He'd set that off to the side for later. He was really coming to appreciate his replica and his replica's choices in friends now. Might as well see if Dirk would be willing to make him something to remember the replica by.

Ooh, and the next one he pulled out was an onyx.

"Where'd yah get these?" Dirk asked.

"I pick them up. My line of work isn't the most glorious, but I usually end up with a pretty good haul."

"Thievin'?" And, _wow_ did that make Dirk sound mad.

"No. Payment. Or tips. Or, in some cases, inheritance. Old family line on my mother's side, and I might have been a bit mean to my little brother and hidden most of it from him," he replied. "What's the point of stealing when I make obnoxious amounts of money just doing my job here and there?" Hm, he'd keep the onyx, too. Now if only he could find a nice yellow topaz...

He dug through his little box for a bit before setting his emerald and onyx aside and half-dumping the box out.

Dirk chuckled. "Yah look like a little kid lookin' fer a particular color."

Danté almost choked. "I _am_ looking for a particular color," he replied. "A nice light gold."

"Green, black, and gold? Why?"

...Well. Dirk _was_ a craftsman.

"My... My little brother was heterochromatic. Otherwise? We're twins," he said. He'd seen it in Dark's eyes.

The replica looked at him like he was a brother. An older brother who'd gone astray, and... maybe he had.

He needed the reminder.

A pink gem caught his eye, and he lifted it, letting the sunlight hit it.

Arietta.

Another mistake. Another person he needed to remember.

But... later.

* * *

 ** _Fun Fact:_** _Dante certainly isn't in the position to be explaining fomicry to Dirk right now, that's for sure..._

 _Almost dying really kinda put things in perspective for this guy, I have to admit. Though... I wish he'd stop kinda sliding back and forth between a mentally good place and a mentally bad place. :/ But it doesn't look like that'll be happening until after the x-over section in Book 3. Definitely makes for a different mind from the one I'm used to poking around in._


	3. Chapter 1-3 Part 3

And here is the usual Friday update! :D See, I can update on a schedule~

(Though, admittedly, I did almost forget due to doing nothing but knitting most of the day. Yes, knitting. Mom's birthday and Christmas presents aren't going to make themselves.)

* * *

 _"Ooh, mutual learning! Yes, done deal!" -Noishe_

* * *

 **Chapter 1.3 - Second Chance  
Part 3**

Danté stretched carefully, making sure that he was in the condition he was hoping he was in.

Three days in, and the cabin fever was setting in.

Which was why he was out here, stretching and looking around. The area around the house made for a nice obstacle course, even if Dirk hadn't planned it like that. The wood pile, the stump with the logs still waiting to be split, the fallen tree there, the stream, the stable...

The only area that Danté didn't look at like it could possibly be hiding an obstacle was the area around Anna's grave.

He wasn't much for visiting graves, but he could honor the woman's memory and not be using her grave as another obstacle, at least.

Course plotted out in his mind, he started moving, taking it at a slower-than-usual pace just to try to get a feel for it. He didn't need to be tripping over roots he should have spotted on a practice run, after all. And there was definitely plenty to trip over, and run into, and slam up against.

He worked it out, ran three laps to get a feel for his makeshift course, and then stopped, stretched some more—nothing really hurting, that was good—and eyed it up again.

Then he took off.

He was halfway through, and in midair to boot, when he heard Lloyd. "Oh, cool!"

Danté snorted to himself, stuck the landing, and promptly ignored the kid, racing through the trees in a bit of a slalom that really would have worked better if the trees hadn't been so _big_.

He came to a halt when he realized that Lloyd wasn't just going to leave him alone, though, and sighed as the boy ran up to him with a grin on his face. "That was awesome!"

Danté grunted. "It felt awesome," he muttered. And, really... it wasn't a lie. Being able to move again, proving to himself that he could still do everything he'd been able to do months ago, before his life had turned into 'get there before Kairi'...

"Where'd you learn to do that flip?" Lloyd asked.

"Master Ryndor taught me. Made me run an obstacle course a lot when I was your age," Danté said. Hm. There was an idea...

Nah. Better not. He wasn't sure he could keep a good pace with Lloyd, and letting the kid get hurt would put him in some serious hot water with Dirk. While he was still healing, at least, Danté didn't want to piss the dwarf off.

"Can you teach me?"

"No."

Danté blinked at Noishe. "Why not? I mean, not right now, but..."

"Definitely not right now. Not when you're still injured. And you might have the pain tolerance of a rock, but in case you didn't notice, you ripped one of your cuts open again."

What?

Danté glanced down, and spotted the blood on his shirt immediately. Not hard, when it was a dull tan color that matched the edging on his coat.

He lifted the edge and inspected the wound. Yup, one of the deeper cuts into his sides, and it had opened up again.

He sighed. "Definitely not until I'm fully healed," he concluded. "And maybe not until I've gotten back into shape, even." Because he could feel it. He was winded, his muscles were burning, and he'd come too close to botching the landings on a couple of those flips.

He was out of practice. Which meant he'd gotten lazy.

That was going to get him killed if he wasn't careful.

Best to correct it _now_.

Though, with the way Noishe was eying him, his _now_ would have to wait a few days.

"Definitely not until you're fully healed and back in practice yourself."

Yup. Danté had gotten the feeling that Noishe was about to go mother-hen on them, and he'd been right.

He sighed and ruffled Lloyd's hair. "Maybe later, kid."

"Aw... but..."

"I have to be able to keep up with you, especially when you're hitting some of those obstacles. Ryndor had me running courses like that when I was your age, yeah, but he was right there in the beginning to make sure I didn't crack my head open," he said. Lloyd flinched a bit.

"Oh."

"I'll teach you the tricks to it, but not until I'm sure I can catch you if you slip up," he said, making it quite clear that that was going to be the end of the conversation. Lloyd cheered up a bit.

"Okay."

"Come on, kid. I saw you come out of the house. Dirk need something from me?"

"Dad says we're going into town tomorrow morning. Wanted to know if you wanted to come or not."

Danté hummed. Well... He should go. He _should_. And he had a feeling that Noishe wouldn't argue it, even if the protozoan seemed to be fussing over his wounds. So... go into town, find supplies, since he was out of just about everything, maybe find himself some new weapons...

His guns wouldn't work here even if he had them. Not without fonons. And... well. Dirk was good, but he didn't think he'd be able to make a mana version of them. Even if Dirk could... Danté didn't want to ask that of the dwarf.

So he was going to have to learn a totally new weapon.

It couldn't be _that_ hard, could it? Dark had mastered those chakrams pretty damn fast.

...Dark was also a replica. Replicas tended to learn fast.

But then, that wasn't a valid argument either, because Rhunön's research had shown that the first two years were crucial. The learning curve was amazing in that time, and then after that, it started dropping to match the learning curve of a human of the same age.

So... Dark had learned a new weapon.

He'd have to do the same. Not by choice, but by necessity.

He stepped into the house behind Lloyd, and spotted an amused Dirk at the stove.

"Gettin' stir-crazy, lad?"

That was the other thing. Dirk seemed _determined_ to see Danté as a child still.

He'd stopped being a child years ago.

"Yeah. Tore open my side again, though. Guess I'll have to leave the acrobatics for after everything's fully healed," he said.

"It was so cool, Dad! He flipped right over the wood pile!" Lloyd piped up. "And he said he'd teach me, too!"

Dirk shot Danté a look. Not one Danté bothered to translate; he had a feeling it added up to something along the lines of 'you didn't.'

"Don't get too excited, brat. It's gonna be a few weeks yet. I don't heal that fast, and I still have to get back in shape. I've been slacking here lately." And now he had to add weapons training on top of that.

Yeah. He'd be stuck here for a while longer than he'd meant to be.

Dirk sat breakfast on the table, and Danté ate through his oats quietly, eyes unfocused as he worked through what all he needed to do before he could start seeking work.

Training. Weapons. Clothes. Food. Map.

Map.

Fuck.

"Hey, Noishe?"

Noishe's ears perked straight up. "Yeah?"

"You said you used to travel a lot, right?"

"Yup."

"Think you could teach me a little geography?" he asked.

Noishe gave him a big doggy grin, before his ears and tail dropped. "Fuck."

Danté snickered. "I'll play the name game for Auldrant if you'll do it for Sylvarant."

"Ooh, mutual learning! Yes, done deal!" Noishe replied before taking off, presumably to find a map. Danté chuckled.

"What was that about?" Dirk asked.

"Noishe is a bit of a seasoned traveler, and I'm not familiar with the area. Planning ahead for when I leave. I offered to swap travel stories with him."

Dirk looked a bit skeptical, but didn't say anything. Lloyd looked curious though.

"Why won't Noishe leave? I mean, I like him, he's nice, but..."

"I don't really appreciate having the mutt in the house," Dirk muttered.

Danté crossed his arms. "Noishe called him Firheicing. It's..." He stopped and sighed. How to explain this...? "Most species of monster tend to call it as they see it." Though ligers only somewhat... "So a liger with a blue mane and a habit of swimming in the nearby lake would be called Blue-Mane-Swims-in-the-Lake." Though, usually only by a serpent or a Cheagle. "Some monsters leave it there, some go a step further and shorten that." Danté frowned. "Anyway, that's what Firheicing is. He hasn't told me the man's human name yet, but given that we have to play the spelling game to manage it, I can't blame him."

"This matters because...?"

"Best I can tell? Firheicing was Lloyd's biological father."

The silence that fell over the table was deafening.

Wow.

"Noishe... Noishe was my dad's..." Lloyd started. Danté nodded.

"I'd guess less 'pet' and more 'partner'. Kallig and I were the same way," he said. "Anyway, Noishe sticks close because of that."

Dirk glanced from Danté, to Lloyd, to Noishe, who was padding back in with a rolled map in his mouth.

Then the dwarf sighed. "Well. Guess that settles it then. Suppose I'd better get that stable finished."

Noishe tilted his head to the side. "Huh?"

Danté shrugged. "I told them about Firheicing. I'd guess I'm right in assuming he was Lloyd's father?"

Noishe nodded, then sat down, the map dropping out of his mouth as it hung open. Danté smirked a bit and went back to his breakfast, rapidly finishing it off.

"Stay? Please, please, _please_ spirits stay?"

Danté coughed as he tried to clear his throat. "I'm not your damn translator."

Dirk shot him a warning look, and Danté winced. Whoops. That was in Common.

Noishe whined. "Pleeeeeeeeeeeease?"

Lloyd looked back and forth between Danté and Noishe. "What's he saying?"

Danté scowled, stood, and took his bowl and spoon to the sink. "No."

"Pretty please with cherries on top?"

"Forget it."

"Why are you so adamant—"

"Because they don't need my kind of trouble!"

A quiet yelp had Danté looking back at the table. Lloyd. That last growl had startled the boy, _frightened_ him.

Danté sighed. "We'll talk about this later."

Noishe's ears laid flat against his head, no longer flopping around from their sheer size, and Danté looked at Dirk and gestured to his empty bowl.

"Lad, yeh don't have ta—"

"I might as well earn my keep. And I'll go into town with you tomorrow. I've got... little more than the clothes on my back, really. Money's all fine and good, but I need the stuff I can buy with it," he said. "I'd... hoped to head out within the week, but..."

"Yeh're injured, an' ah don't think Noishe would let yeh go if yeh tried."

"And you said—"

"I know, kiddo. I said I'd hoped. Problem is, I've lost my previous weapons. Which means I need to re-learn how to fight while I'm at it. I'm gonna be here a lot longer than I'd wanted to. Might as well pitch in," Danté said. Dirk hummed, and handed over his bowl.

Noishe padded over to pick up the map he'd dropped and found a corner, while Danté did the dishes and fought with the warring emotions clouding his thoughts.

He was an assassin, dammit! He wasn't supposed to have feelings! He was a cold-blooded killer, a murderer—

" _Don't let it die without the rest of you again."_

Danté sat the cleaned dishes in the drying rack, then accepted Lloyd's when the boy walked over and held up his bowl quietly.

He'd let his heart beat again. And... And maybe it was going to come back to bite him in the ass. Because here he was, an assassin, blackest of the black, doing dishes in a house opened to him by a little boy who already looked up to him.

A little boy who didn't care that he'd claimed to be a half-elf. A little boy who... was willing to let him in.

He needed to leave.

Not for himself, not anymore. For that kid.

Ryndor had never intended to raise him as an assassin. The auburn-haired man had admitted to that time and time again. But that was the path Danté had taken, Danté and Dark both.

And now... Danté was afraid. He was afraid that if he stayed, he'd be inflicting that same curse on the little boy who was trying to open up his heart to an assassin.

He had to leave.

And yet… He couldn't. Couldn't just up and leave tomorrow, he had to stay at least a couple weeks so he could heal and get things together for when he _did_ leave.

And… He knew if he stayed too long, he wouldn't be able to leave forever. He'd come back, again and again, because he knew how his heart worked. Once someone wormed their way into it, they were there, and he held onto those bonds like lifelines even when he refused to acknowledge them.

Ryndor. Rhunön. Dark. Arietta.

Now Lloyd, Noishe, and to a much lesser extent, Dirk.

Danté was torn.

He didn't know what to do anymore.

The assassin sighed and put the last of the dishes in the dish rack before glancing outside. There was Lloyd, running off toward the woods where the boy often played during the day, and Danté wondered when he'd fallen so far as to start wishing that he could leave to _protect_ someone.

Heh. He had really let the whole 'saving Kairi' thing get to his head, hadn't he?

"Danté?"

He glanced behind him, then walked over to join Noishe, pulling out his wing pack and finding his map of Auldrant while he was at it. The moment he laid the map out, Noishe was pushing the Sylvarant map toward him, and he unrolled this one over top of the Auldrant map.

"Alright, here we go. This is—" a word Danté didn't understand, but which he guessed was the name of the town Noishe's paw was next to. "We're kinda up here, north-northwest of the town. The—" another unknown growl "—Temple is on the other side of the mountain range, over here, and the—" the first unknown again "Human Farm is over here."

Danté snorted. "Okay. What's…" He copied Noishe's whine-growl as best he could.

Noishe's ears laid flat. "Crap."

Danté gave him a wry smile. "Well. We did say we'd be playing the spelling game."

Noishe sighed. "Yeah. I guess we did. Okay, fine… Insect, sun, energy, leaf, insect, animal."

Iselia. So, the town was Iselia, and that had been the Iselia Human Ranch…

Danté really wasn't sure he wanted to know what a 'human ranch' was. But he knew one thing.

It didn't sound like the kind of place he wanted to be hanging around, or somewhere he wanted Lloyd to end up.

"The other one? The… what, Temple?"

"Mushroom, animal, rabbit, tree, energy, leaf," Noishe said. Danté noted that he seemed sad.

"Martel?"

Noishe's head dropped. "It's… a long story," he said finally.

Danté decided to drop it.

* * *

 ** _Fun Fact:_** _Almost as much of Dante's speech underlining got eaten this time as Noishe's._

 _Okay, seriously though... Noishe and Dante get along very well for a_ lot _of reasons... a couple of which I think we've all got figured out now._

 _(Also, 'Human Farm' was intentional. Dante associates that particular growl with 'farm,' not 'ranch' just yet. That said, 'human buckets', a typo I found in Version 2, I have yet to translate over a year later. I was_ very _tired when I wrote that. There's multiple mentions of cars and Transformers stuff in that section, too. Probably part of why I gave up on it.)_


	4. Chapter 1-4 Part 4

I went to post this earlier and found that Dante had taken a page from Kairi's notebook. Which page? Why, the one that details exactly the best way to tear through an outline like a tornado in a trailer park while simultaneously cackling and flipping me the bird. Of course. Kairi never does anything by halves, and if he's going to properly take a page from her book, neither will Dante. -eyeroll-

That said, I think I've finally made the insanity coalesce into something a bit more manageable. Now I just need to go fill in the plot holes Tornado-Dante left behind in his wake.

Enjoy. I'll see everyone again on Sunday.

* * *

 _Well,_ that _secret lasted real long. -Dante_

 _"Well, all sources say you never use it, so… Noishe decided it was going to be his brush instead." -Dante_

* * *

 **Chapter 1.4 - Second Chance  
Part 4**

Danté lost track of the time, talking to Noishe, listening to his stories of his travels. He didn't notice that it was dinner time until the smells started to tickle his nose, and he looked over at the small kitchenette in surprise.

There stood Dirk, once again hustling about and preparing food, and there went most of the daylight.

"You two having fun?" Dirk asked.

"Apparently," Danté replied. "I hadn't realized… Heh. I don't think I've lost track of time like this since I was a child."

Dirk glanced back at him, then back at the stove. "Yeh're not from Sylvarant."

Well, _that_ secret lasted real long.

"No, I'm not."

"Yeh said yeh'd have ta learn a new weapon."

Danté grimaced. "Yeah. I mean… Even if I had my guns, without fonons, I wouldn't be able to use them."

Dirk turned around, eyed him, Noishe, and the maps between them, and then went back to cooking. "Yeh sure yeh'll manage it? It ain't easy startin' over, an' as much as ah hate admittin' it, yeh've had a hard life."

Danté shrugged. "Dark managed it. I mean… I'm not really pleased with it, but… I don't have a choice. Like I said. Even if I had my guns, I wouldn't be able to use them. They rely on fonons."

Dirk hummed a bit as he went about cooking dinner, and Danté watched for a bit before sighing. "Anything I can help with?"

"Yeh really don't handle bed rest well, do ya, lad?" Dirk asked, even as he held out a couple tomatoes and a knife.

"Being this wounded usually means I screwed up, and if I screwed up, staying in one place is the _last_ thing I want to do," Danté replied, taking the tomatoes and pulling down a cutting board. It didn't take him long to wash his hands, the tomatoes, and get the remains of the stems off them.

"Ah don't _want_ to know what yeh do for a livin', do ah?"

"Nope. Large part of why I want to leave. Lloyd doesn't need me hanging around."

Silence dropped over them, and Noishe padded over and rubbed his head against Danté's hip. It wasn't really the most effective form of comfort, usually, but…

But… Kallig had always done the same thing. Danté didn't like having his hands full, even if it was just with fur.

Danté growled a soft 'thank you' to Noishe as he cut up the tomatoes.

"…Ugh."

"Lloyd, lad, they're good for yeh, and yeh don't complain _that_ loud when ah feed yeh chili," Dirk grumbled.

Lloyd made a sad almost-moan sound and wandered off, and Danté watched him go amusedly. "Well. He and Kairi wouldn't get along well. If what Zion told me of her eating habits was correct, she _loved_ tomatoes."

"Loved?"

Danté blinked at Dirk, then realized what he was getting at.

Past tense. Implies dead.

Danté sighed. "She wasn't exactly a friend. But… she seemed willing to give me a chance, when all I wanted was her captured and Dark dead. My… brother and I didn't get along well. At all." He stopped and shook his head. "I don't know what happened to her. I was trying to cut her loose, when…" He glanced at Dirk and gestured to his bandages."All I can do is hope it was enough."

The silence started to stretch, even as Danté handed the chopped tomatoes over to Dirk and then started looking around for something else to do. Not that there was much to be done. Dirk seemed to have it all under control.

Lloyd was plodding down the stairs with a book, which got put on the table as the boy clambered up into his chair.

Storybook, from the pictures he could see even from over here.

He walked over and glanced over Lloyd's shoulder, grateful that a large part of why he'd been so riveted to Noishe's map earlier was because of the language written on it.

It looked like, while the two worlds shared a currency, they didn't share an alphabet.

He idly wondered how long the storybook would hold Lloyd's attention. The kid was bad at keeping focused for any amount of time.

"So…"

Danté sighed. Great. Here went Noishe, asking questions he didn't want to answer again.

"When you said 'your kind of trouble'…"

"I kill people for a living. It's… My mentor never intended for me to follow in his footsteps, and I did. My brother did. Lloyd… To be honest, I'm scared that if I stay here, Lloyd's going to try to follow in my footsteps, and on top of the fact that that's _not_ a line of work you, his adoptive father, or his biological father will like him getting involved in..." Danté paused to glance at the boy at the table. "I'm also worried that he _will_ , and that I'm going to have to train him, and I'm not going to do a good enough job, and he's going to get himself _killed_ because I couldn't teach him everything he needed. I'm… not the teaching type."

Noishe laid down and dropped his head into Danté's lap again. "If he chooses that path… Look. I don't want him going that way, no. But if he does… I'd rather you trained him. At least then he's not going blindly."

Danté shook his head. "If I can avoid it, I will."

"Avoid what?"

Danté blinked and stared at the boy who'd abandoned his storybook in favor of joining them in the corner. Then he sighed. How the hell was he supposed to answer this one? It wasn't Lloyd's business? But it was. It was about him, after all.

He didn't want to know? Yeah, he probably didn't actually want to know, but he was still young. He was at that age where being an assassin probably sounded cool.

Danté would tell him when he was older? That implied he'd be _around_ then, and he was still doing his best to deny that would be happening.

He finally just settled for sighing and shaking his head. "Something that needs to be avoided," he answered vaguely. Noishe gave him an unamused look, and Lloyd looked disappointed, but Danté was past the point of caring.

"So, you've got everything figured out, then? Are you sure you'll be able to keep up the assassin thing here, anyway?" Noishe asked.

Danté huffed. "No, I'm not sure," he replied honestly. "But… the thing is… my skillset is pretty much good for whatever weapon I choose. I _can_ do close-quarters, I can do long-range, but I was trained to make sure the target was dead by fatal injury. Poison is too likely to be caught and cured. So… yeah, I'll have to learn an entirely new weapon, but I'll be able to work around it."

Noishe made an almost humming noise, and Danté ran a hand through the fur on his neck. Hm… Still pretty knotted up…

"Hey, Lloyd. Pass me the brush, please?"

Lloyd blinked, glanced over toward where Danté was gesturing, and grabbed the brush, then frowned at it. "Isn't this _my_ brush?"

Danté chuckled. "Well, all sources say you never use it, so… Noishe decided it was going to be his brush instead."

Lloyd made a face that was caught somewhere between amusement and confusion, and Danté couldn't help but smile at the expression.

Dammit.

He was getting attached.

Lloyd handed him the brush, and Noishe stretched a bit, letting Danté go back to brushing on him. He desperately needed it, it seemed.

"When was the last time you got a good brushing?" Danté asked.

"Firheicing, about a month before the cliff."

The cliff.

Noishe had mentioned that multiple times now. Given the grave out back, the distinct lack of Lloyd's biological father, and the fact that there was a 'human ranch' nearby, Danté had a feeling that he knew roughly what had happened.

If the ranches were anything close to what they sounded like, it was very possible that Lloyd's mother had been a Ranch escapee. If they'd been chased, and there was a cliff anywhere near the Iselia Human Ranch, then that would explain everything.

And the geography of the area supported that theory, too.

Danté sighed, pulled another mat of white fur out of the brush, and glanced over Noishe's body. "Here, scoot. Let me see what I can do for your tail," he muttered, patting the protozoan's rump.

Noishe stood, half-curled himself around Lloyd, and laid down again, leaving his tail right in front of Danté. The assassin started brushing out the furry appendage while Lloyd watched.

"Did you ask him what… what Dad's name was?"

Noishe's ears perked up. "Oh, right… Erk, I'm really starting to hate the spelling game…"

Danté chuckled. "No, but we've been playing the spelling game all day, so…" He shrugged. "Noishe really doesn't like it, and I don't blame him. It's a bit annoying."

"Spelling game?" Lloyd asked.

"Some words don't translate nicely from the language I'm used to into Noishe's language. So we play the spelling game to translate it. It's like…" Danté glanced at the ceiling. "Iselia. Town names tend to be horrible, since the name for Iselia in Common is, obviously, Iselia, but then in Noishe's language, the series of growls comes out to something along the lines of Vilora, if I'm not horribly mistaken. So. Anyway."

"Firheicing is Noishe's name for him, right?" Lloyd asked. Danté nodded.

"Yup. Yours is actually pretty close. More Lloyden than Lloyd, but… much closer than your father's." Danté glanced past Lloyd to Noishe, who sighed.

"Alright… Let me think… Hm… Last letter of Dirk, then rock, apple, tree, orange, sun."

"Yeah, those 'k's get pretty difficult too, don't they?" Danté mused.

"Huh?"

Danté chuckled. "Well. How many words do _you_ know that start with 'k'? Or 'z' for that matter? That's another one we had fun with." Lloyd tilted his head to the side, utterly confused, and Danté shrugged. "That language doesn't have an alphabet, Lloyd. Noishe can spell in Common because he's spent so many years around humans. Kallig, Koran, Sorylle, probably Twilight could all do the same, but most monsters can't. They don't have alphabets, because they have no reason to be writing anything down."

"Oh… so the spelling game…"

"Last letter of dark, then the first letters of rock, apple, tree, orange, and sun," Danté said, swapping out Dirk for dark, which was a name in Danté's book, but also something readily apparent in nature, which was where most of Noishe's words tended to come from.

Lloyd frowned for a moment. "K… R… A… T… O… S…" Then it seemed to hit him. "Kratos?"

Danté offered up a smile and nodded.

Watching Lloyd light up was… Amazing. The way his confusion had morphed into hope, and wonder, and then awe…

He found himself with an armful of five-year-old a moment later, and Noishe let out an indignant yip.

Lloyd was gone again in a second, latched onto Noishe's back and hugging the protozoan like he was trying to squeeze the very life out of the beast.

"Ack, don't suffocate me!"

Danté laughed. Actually _laughed_ for the first time in years.

"Kratos, eh?"

He glanced up at Dirk and shrugged. "Apparently."

Noishe managed to shake Lloyd off and looked over at Danté. "Apple… oh crap… uh… Oh. There we go. 'Uh.' Hm… Run, insect, orange, night."

Danté raised an eyebrow and started stringing letters together. A, U, R, I, O, N… Aurion.

That sounded suspiciously like a surname to him.

Which meant that, more than likely, it _was_ a surname.

"Kratos Aurion," he said, voice soft.

Noishe nodded, and Lloyd had that look of awe on his face again.

Heh. At least one of them knew his parents' names…

"You don't know yours?"

Oh shit. He said that out loud?

"Deinora Darigan," he said. "That was my mother's name. Best that Master Ryndor was able to tell, she and my father weren't married. Darigan was her maiden name. We never figured out who my father was."

Lloyd blinked, and looked sad. "Aw… and you don't have a Noishe to tell you…"

…Oh _forests_ , this kid was going to have him wrapped around his little fingers in just a few more days…

"If I hadn't had to leave, Rhunön might have been able to find out eventually. She'd been looking into it for years," he admitted. "She might find out yet. Dark would probably be interested, especially if he's still alive. But… It's of no use to me now. Might as well just move on."

Lloyd blinked, then glanced over at Dirk. Dirk huffed. "Ah don't think so, lad."

"But…"

Danté looked back and forth between the two for a moment, before he realized that Lloyd was silently asking Dirk if they could adopt him.

He sighed. "I had Master Ryndor growing up. He's the closest thing I ever had to a father figure, and…" Danté stopped, considered the meeting near the Monolith of Syal, and let a small, sad smile pull at the corners of his lips. "Honestly… I know most of the gambling and drinking and other stuff he started doing in the last couple years made him a less-than-stellar role model… but Dark and I were already long gone by then. That Dark managed to come back around… I think he did a better job raising us than he gives himself credit for."

Dirk smiled. "Well. Regardless. Dinner's ready. You two need to eat, and yeh both need ta rest if we're headin' inta town later."

Danté nodded and got to his feet, walking over to the table and abandoning the brush with the pile of white and green fur. He could brush Noishe some more tomorrow. He'd been doing it off and on for the last few days, anyway, as it made for a rather useful little pastime.

Lloyd sat next to him at the table, eating his dinner while Danté stared off into space and dug into his.

Weapons. He needed to figure out weapons.

Danté was tempted to try to go Dark's route, but… Well.

Dark had always had a grace to him that Danté lacked. A grace that got translated into a deadly dance. The twirls and spins looked almost girly, especially with that long braid, but Danté wasn't fooled by the pretty white and floral chakrams.

Dark was just as deadly as ever, and the poison on those blades was nothing to scoff at.

Kairi's katana, Dark's chakrams, that swallow-blade he'd last seen Seth with, the gray axe the brown-haired girl had started using after a time, Reighn's new scythe, Sync's daggers.

Danté knew they were deadly. Van. Legretta. Zion. Those were the three he knew for sure. Outside of them?

Hm. Poison…

Poison was dangerous.

It was too risky to be using regularly, but… well…

There was a reason he'd always carried gloves and a dagger on him before.

A little difference in MO did wonders for throwing off a trail...

* * *

 _ **Fun Fact:** Dante's birth father will be revealed in Book 3. Right now... best let him stay happily oblivious of just which psychopath he shares blood with._


	5. Chapter 1-5 Part 5

Happy birthday to Mom, happy birthday to Mom, happy birthday dear mother, happy birthday to Mom~

:D

Gotta love finding arbitrary reasons for posting. Enjoy!

* * *

 _He stood corrected. Mother-hen_ extraordinaire _. -Dante_

 _"I think I'm developing a permanent bruise on my ribs." -Noishe_

* * *

 **Chapter 1.5 - Second Chance  
Part 5**

The problem with five-year-olds, Danté mused, was that they were liable to spill stuff.

Like the fact that he was supposedly a half-elf.

Thank anything that was listening that he'd managed to get everything he needed _before_ the rapidly-turning-into-a-lynch-mob formed.

He left. Walked right out the gates and headed back toward the house Lloyd and Dirk shared.

The two of them caught up later, Lloyd looking depressed, and Dirk exasperated.

"People are stupid," Danté said quite simply when Lloyd started to apologize. He reached down and ruffled the kid's already-messy hair. "Though I think the villagers might have been a bit smarter than the average. I know I'm not good news, but still."

"It's not fair. Not for you, not for Colette…"

"People are stupid. It happens, and there's nothing that can be done about it." Lloyd looked up at him sadly, and Danté shrugged. "Come on. Why don't you help me take inventory? I've got more shiny rocks than I know what to do with."

Lloyd made a face. "Why do you have shiny rocks?"

Dirk snorted behind the boy, and Danté smirked. "My mother left them for me. Some of them, at least. Or my employers gave them to me."

Lloyd looked so very confused still, and Danté snickered a bit.

Oh, he'd be raised by a dwarf. But if Danté couldn't force himself to simply walk away once he was healed and back in top form? He'd be damned if he didn't have Lloyd calling precious gems 'shiny rocks' by the time the kid was seven.

And from the look on Dirk's face, the dwarf _knew_ it, and had every intention of making sure Lloyd knew not only what they actually were, but also all the tricks of how to tell each gemstone apart. It wasn't like Danté himself didn't have those skills, but he still persisted in calling them 'shiny rocks' just to confuse people, and throw them off the gems.

Oddly, Danté looked forward to the challenge.

Yup. He was getting in too deep, and he hadn't been here a full week yet.

He sat down in his usual corner, pulled his rather nice-sized box of gems out, and then dumped it out on the floor. He had a smaller box with a few special ones set aside—the three he'd pulled out because they reminded him of Dark, two pink gems just the same shades as Arietta's hair and eyes, a bright green one that matched Ryndor's eyes—but these, he needed to run an inventory on. He'd helped Rhunön with hers time and time again, and he knew the theory behind why it was a good idea, but he'd never done it much previously.

"Ooh, pretty!"

Danté chuckled. "Yup. They are, aren't they?" He pulled out one of the notebooks he'd bought in town and a pencil, then started sorting the gems by color. Lloyd figured it out quickly, and once Danté had all of the red ones, he got to work making notes.

He'd pull one out here and there as he went that he either wasn't sure on or that didn't belong in a certain group, mostly various-colored topazes, but otherwise, it was quiet and mostly boring work.

He spotted Lloyd holding up a sapphire at one point and smiled. "Remind you of something?"

The boy dropped the little blue stone and turned a bright red. "Uh…"

Danté chuckled and pulled over the smaller box he'd set aside previously. "I do it too. See? The green, gold, and black for my brother. The pink for Arietta."

"Was Arietta your girlfriend?"

Danté paused in setting the little box off to the side again, and glanced at Lloyd. "I… no. She wasn't. But… if things had been different… she might have been." Maybe. If he'd had a chance to really talk to her.

Her attachment to him… he'd thought it another childish infatuation, but she'd proven him wrong.

Now… if anything could have happened, he'd never know.

Still.

"Remind you of something?" he asked again, gesturing to the sapphire.

"Colette's eyes are that same shade of blue," Lloyd said, still a bright pink color.

Danté chuckled a bit. "You want to keep it?"

Lloyd blinked up at him, stared for a bit, and then tilted his head to the side. "But…"

"As far as I'm concerned, it's a shiny rock, and its only use is to be sold if I'm short on gald or something," Danté replied. "I've set a bunch aside to be used for something later. You can have it if you want it. I'm sure Dirk could make something out of it."

Lloyd smiled. "Okay."

Noishe padded over and started looking through the reds, and Danté sighed. "What are _you_ up to now?"

A garnet was carefully shifted out of the pile, followed by a ruby. "Firheicing. Lloyd got his eye color, though his eyes are darker, more brown than red. But he got his mother's hair."

Oh.

Danté nodded and picked the two gems up. "Which one's which?"

"Darker one's his hair, lighter's his eyes," Noishe said.

"Huh? What'd Noishe pick out?"

Danté gestured for Lloyd to hold out his hand. "Since we're picking out eye and hair colors, Noishe thought he'd pull your dad's for you," he said, before dropping the ruby into Lloyd's open palm. "Eyes…" Then he dropped the garnet. "Hair."

Lloyd blinked at the two little stones, then looked over at Noishe, closed his fist around the two gems, and tackle-hugged the protozoan.

Danté chuckled. Lloyd was doing that a _lot_ these days, it seemed, and Noishe didn't seem to mind in the least.

It suddenly hit him then what he was doing.

Lloyd hadn't known anything of his biological father before he'd started translating for Noishe. Hadn't realized that Noishe was his father's partner, hadn't known even what color his father's hair was.

Danté was helping him put together a better picture of his family.

He checked his lists, and the piles of gems, and then scratched off the three gems Noishe and Lloyd had pulled out before putting them all back into the box and stashing it back away in his wing pack.

Notably after making a note on what color the box was on his list.

Danté hoarded everything he could get his hands on. Which meant, of course, that he had multiple boxes of little things that sold well.

He was on his feet and wandering off a moment later.

"Danté?"

"I'll be back later, kid. Just going out for a walk." He needed to clear his head. Badly. So badly that he wasn't even sure it was going to help him out at all.

"You'd better not stress those wounds again," Noishe growled after him warningly.

"I won't." Then, after a moment, he went ahead and added a gruff, "Mother-hen."

"…You know, it's been a few thousand years since the last time I was called that."

Oh great. So Danté wasn't the only one to notice, which meant Noishe had been doing it for ages already.

He stood corrected.

Mother-hen _extraordinaire._

He stepped out the door and headed off along a path. Most of Lloyd's favorite places to play were along these paths, either worn by the boy himself or by Dirk, to make sure that Lloyd didn't go too close to the Human Ranch.

Danté mused over those while he was at it.

Human Ranch. He'd heard a few of the villagers call him a Desian before he's rolled his eyes and left, and from what little he'd managed to get out of Noishe, the Desians ran the Ranches. So, to be a half-elf and automatically be called a Desian said a lot about the Ranches.

It made him curious. Were the half-elves on Sylvarant really just that sure of their superiority that they were—more than likely—enslaving humans? Or was it less a superiority thing, and more revenge for something that Danté didn't really want to understand? If half-elves were treated poorly regardless of where they went…

He tripped over a root, and didn't quite managed to save his balance.

The sharp pain in his left hand had him hissing and pulling it away from the ground. Not that that did much good, what with the green crystal shard sticking out of it.

Wait, what?

Danté took a second look at the crystal. Yup.

Another shard of the Monolith.

He pulled it out of his hand and inspected the damage. Not too bad. It would be healed before that cut in his side was.

He pulled out some bandages and managed to wrap it quickly before tucking the crystal shard into a pocket and looking around for any more.

The clearing where he'd first woken up with Lloyd knelt over him was positively _littered_ with the shards, and Danté didn't stop until he was running out of light.

He knew there was more than what he'd found, but he couldn't stay out here all night, so he headed back to the house, very nearly running right into Dirk on his way back.

"Danté? Yeh alright, lad?"

Danté shook his head. No. No, he was not alright. His pockets were full of Monolith shards. That clearing still had more littering it…

He felt _wrong_. Like something in his very biology was changing, and he knew it wasn't supposed to be happening. It wasn't the lack of fonons. It wasn't the mana of Sylvarant. The fonons of Auldrant had never changed one of the poor souls dragged there by Ryndor. Kairi had been an anomaly.

The only explanation was the Monolith shard in his chest. Which was fitting. Hadn't the damn thing been killing Kairi by sucking her soul right out of her?

Something was wrong, and it was the shard's fault. And now there were more of them.

Danté and Dirk made it back to the house before Dirk noticed his hand and grabbed him by the arm, apparently intending to get a better look at it.

Danté _twisted,_ and then Noishe was right there, half-tossing Dirk to the side and getting a hard shove to the side.

The pained yelp brought him back to his senses, and Danté immediately looked for Lloyd.

Not down here.

Thank forests.

"Noishe? How bad…"

"Ow… Ah, not as bad as some of them the last few days, but I think I'm developing a permanent bruise on my ribs," Noishe replied. "Had a feeling you might react like that. You looked pretty out of it."

Danté closed his eyes, took three deep breaths, and then looked up at Dirk from where he was knelt on the floor. "Word of advice? If I'm not really there, grabbing me is the _last_ thing you want to do."

Dirk nodded, and looked rather like he'd swallowed something sour. "Yeh were trained ta kill."

"Yeah. Anything that gets too close, especially if I'm not really _aware_. That's a large part of why I've had Noishe making sure Lloyd can't wake me up. That kid startles me awake… I _will_ kill him before I realize what's going on. Noishe at least reacts fast enough to avoid most of the damage," Danté replied.

"Noted. So. Hand."

He held it out, then pulled a few shards of crystal out of his pocket. "There's… I went back to the clearing. There's these crystal shards all over the place…" he started.

Dirk's eyes narrowed. "Those need destroyed. Ah don't know what the one inside ya is gonna do ta ya, but ah don't like the feel of those."

Danté offered up a smile that probably came out more of a grimace. "I know. I know. I can… I can _feel_ it Dirk. It's not going to kill me, but I don't think I want to know what the end result is going to be."

"Probably not too terrible," Noishe whined softly. "Remember that first morning, I said you felt like a cross between a half-elf and an angel? The angels all have these crystals that turned them into what they are. Firheicing has one, too, and there's one at the Martel Temple for Golgri when she grows up."

Golgri was Noishe's name for Lloyd's friend Colette, Danté managed to remember.

So…

"I don't think they're the same thing."

"Neither do I, but they feel _similar_. So, probably something similar to an angel transformation," Noishe said. "I'll run you through the symptoms later. For now… Ouch. Your hand okay?"

"It's been better. It isn't too deep, and it's my left hand, so it'll be healed soon enough," Danté replied.

Noishe nodded, even as Dirk re-bandaged the cut hand.

"Danté, you're back!"

Danté was grateful Lloyd was only now coming down the stairs.

Less grateful for the tackle-hug.

Noishe chuckled at the shocked look on the teen's face when he registered his armful of five-year-old, and Danté imagined it probably did look strange. Here sat a near-sixteen-year-old, awkwardly holding onto the five-year-old who'd just thrown himself into the teen's lap.

Yeah… He was doomed. There was no way Lloyd was going to just let him leave now, and Dante knew, unless he managed to leave within a few days, he'd be far too attached to even consider leaving forever.

So he sighed, picked the five-year-old up, and stood, resulting in Lloyd letting out a slight squeak of surprise. "Uh…"

"It's dark out," Danté observed. "And you're dressed for bed. And from the look Dirk's giving you, you were _in_ bed before you came down to see me."

"Um…"

"So, back to bed with you," Danté finished.

"Aw… but…"

Danté rolled his eyes. "Come on. You need to sleep while you're still growing. Even Master Ryndor had me in bed by eight when I was your age. And he was more lenient than Dirk."

Lloyd was quiet for a bit. "So… You're gonna stay, right? You're not just gonna go away again?"

Danté paused halfway up the stairs and looked down at the little boy in his arms.

Lloyd had thought…

Lloyd had thought he was leaving.

Danté fought down the pang in his chest. He _didn't_ care. He _didn't_.

…When was the last time he actually felt like he had a home to go back to after a mission? Dark had always had Koran, but Kallig… He'd lost Kallig to the madness years ago. Ryndor had started growing distant the more he tried to kill Dark. Rhunön became absorbed in her research.

Lloyd, Noishe, Dirk to a lesser extent… but even the dwarf.

They were starting to feel like home.

Danté sighed. "Come on, kiddo. Let's get you to bed. I'll still be here in the morning."

"Promise?"

Danté half-snorted. "Promise."

He pointedly ignored the waving tail he could see in the background, the smile the dwarf next to Noishe was wearing.

For that couple of minutes, the only thing in the world that mattered was the smile Lloyd was giving him.

Yeah. There went his hopes of leaving as soon as possible.

* * *

 _ **Fun Fact:** Dante was in a seriously bad place, mentally, when he landed on Sylvarant, which is a large part of why he's so firmly attached himself to Lloyd here. Lloyd is his anchor, literally the only thing keeping him from calling it quits and committing suicide. To a point, in fact, where Dante's entire world kinda revolves around Lloyd._

 _I'm pissed at Forcystus for throwing something complicated at me, but at the same time, I'm willing to roll with it, if only because it's ultimately_ that _that will bring Dante back around to stable mental ground. (That'll take a while, though.)_


	6. Chapter 1-6 Part 6

What's this? Updating a day early? To be honest, it _was_ in my plans...

Alas, what I had intended to be a silly, arbitrary reason for posting has since been forgotten in favor of something else.

Why, in this holiday season, do people have to be so cruel?

Thousands of Dragon Cave eggs have been killed this week in what I have semi-officially dubbed the Viewbomb Plague. While random acts of viewbombing aren't unheard of, this was a concentrated attack on a fansite (Eggs Around the World) and on multiple users, and I myself lost 11 eggs to this tragedy (it nearly became 12, but (iunCy) is one tough little cookie and continues to cling to life), including an extremely rare Caveborn White Zyumorph with the unique code of (FILMS).

So, in an attempt to lift my heart as I try to think as little about (FILMS) as possible, here's another chapter.

* * *

 _The gray liger had been fond of stealing his bed, too, and never mind that Kallig was both feral and had a damn nest of his own. Nope. Danté's bed was his bed when he said it was. -Dante_

* * *

 **Chapter 1.6 - Second Chance  
Part 6**

Danté scowled at the various knife-riddled targets around the clearing.

Good enough for a mercenary, nowhere near the accuracy he needed to achieve to be an assassin.

He stalked over toward the closest of the targets and started pulling knives out.

"Are you sure you don't want to talk to Dirk about—"

"Noishe, there is a world of difference between mercenaries and assassins. Not to mention the fact that they typically don't work in the same circles. I wouldn't be considering it, but I have to protect Lloyd somehow, and the best way to keep people from realizing that I'm an assassin would be to make a name for myself as a mercenary," he replied. "The problem is, while I can pass for a mercenary with my current skill level, I'll never make it as an assassin like this."

Noishe sat down. "And you don't want to enlist Dirk's help because…"

"My guns are pretty damn distinctive, and I'm pretty sure they don't even exist in Sylvarant," he replied. "They were rare enough on Auldrant. The fact that Dark, Legretta and I were the only three people who really used them regularly ought to be indication enough."

Noishe was silent for a while as Dark continued his target practice, now that he'd gathered up all of his knives again.

He was three throws in when Noishe spoke up again. "You could always stick to the mercenary path and not _need_ the difference in weapon to protect your identity."

Danté shot Noishe a sour look and threw the next knife at the protozoan's head.

Predictably, Noishe ducked. He knew well enough now to expect something thrown at him if he made a comment Danté didn't want to hear while the teen was practicing.

Two weeks. Most of his wounds were fully healed, and while he'd started running, he hadn't started in on the obstacle course much yet. He was saving that for later, when he was confident in his ability to not mess up his recovery again, especially since that cut in his side was still healing.

Lloyd was looking forward to him starting his obstacle course again. He'd told the brat time and time again that he wasn't going to teach him for weeks yet, but Lloyd wanted to watch him, and Danté wasn't stupid.

Dirk had been rearranging.

Sure, at a casual glance, the area around the house looked as it always had. Clear of any unnecessary clutter, with the stable and the bench off to one side and the stream and the woodpile… but now there was a whole new level to it.

A fallen tree Dirk had meant to chop up for firewood was left where it was. A cart he usually used for hauling things into town sat behind the house rather than in the stable with Noishe. And some of the hanging vines in the trees past the house weren't vines at all, but ropes dyed to match vines.

All the little things that Dirk had done to give Danté a better obstacle course, all of the little things he'd been doing for him for helping to look after Lloyd…

Danté sighed to himself as he collected his knives again.

There was getting in too deep, and then there was where he was right now, which was somewhere a couple miles past 'too deep' and definitely a long way beyond 'attached.'

Damn, but he'd forgotten how amazing it felt to have a family.

He picked up the last knife, the one he'd thrown at Noishe, and examined it.

He needed his guns.

And as much as he hated the thought of Lloyd ever possibly getting involved in that line of work, as much as he hated the idea that he might drag his demons home with him, that he might get that precious little boy killed…

Danté needed his guns.

If for no other reason than so he could shoot whatever the hell came after his family.

…

Yeah. He was a goner.

"Danté?"

He turned and headed back for the house, sheathing the last knife and strolling home with a single-minded purpose.

He and Dirk needed to figure out how to make guns.

He'd spent enough years taking his apart to clean them, putting them back together, sleeping with one under his pillow and constantly having at least one within easy grabbing distance. So he was going to take what he remembered of his guns to Dirk, and see what they could come up with.

Distinctive. Unique. Dangerous if anyone associated them with him. And they'd betray his real profession to Dirk the second anyone tried to find the maker of the bullets he'd be spending to kill off his targets.

But these were risks he needed to take. Risks he was willing to live with.

Risks he couldn't _not_ risk going through with.

He found the house empty when he got there, and pulled paper out of his wing pack to get to work drawing diagrams. Dirk would need them.

He wasn't at it long before Dirk walked in, a wary Noishe behind him. "Lad?"

Danté finished the first page he'd plotted out in his head, pushed it toward Dirk, and got started on the second page. He knew what these parts did, knew how to pull them apart and put them together, knew how they worked, mostly…

Dirk was silent for a while. "Finally givin' up on the knives?" he asked.

Danté's mouth pressed into a tight line. "On the off chance that my profession comes back to haunt me and someone comes after Lloyd, I'd really rather not take chances."

"Ah might not have the greatest idea what ah'm lookin' at, lad, so correct me if ah'm wrong… but don't these things have a pretty good kickback to 'em?"

"Yup. Worse when loaded with a proper bullet. Fonic bullets weren't as bad, but even then…" Danté glanced up at Dirk, shrugged, and went back to his diagram. "I got used to it. Dark did too. Either one of us could hit a two-inch target from a hundred yards away."

Dirk was quiet for a long while as he looked over Danté's drawings. Not the best in the whole world, Danté knew, but they were better than he figured Dark could do. He'd seen some of Dark's attempts at drawing, even years after the replica had left the Rugnican Archives. Dark could _not_ draw.

On the other hand, he'd had the neatest—if tiniest—handwriting Danté had ever bothered to actually look at. Ryndor's handwriting was horrid, Rhunön's wasn't much better, and Danté doubted Dirk could read his handwriting even if the dwarf _could_ read the fonic alphabet.

Which was probably why he hadn't bothered to label the drawings.

"You're an assassin."

Danté froze, glanced up at Dirk, and noted the sad expression. He nodded once. "Just another in a long line of them, at that," he admitted.

"Yeh ain't plannin' ta train Lloyd ta…"

"Not _planning_ on it, no," Danté replied. Then he sighed. "But… Ryndor never planned to train me or Dark as assassins, either. I figure… if Lloyd chooses to walk down that path, despite everything I'm going to try to throw at him to throw him _off_ of it… Then, yes, I will train him. Because I'd rather he walk out into the world knowing full well exactly what he's doing, and prepared for the consequences of getting caught."

"Yeh have that lad killin' people for hire before he's fifteen, ah'll kill yeh mahself."

Danté closed his eyes, and couldn't quite stop the smile. "If I can't deter Lloyd from following in my footsteps? I can at least hold to that."

He sat there in the silence for a few moments, then heard Dirk walking off.

"I'm surprised you're not kicking me out."

"Lad… Yeh told us within minutes o' meetin' us that yeh were bad news," Dirk said. "An' ah believed yeh. But ah've seen the way yeh treat Lloyd. Ah've seen the way he looks at yeh, and the way yeh act with Noishe. Yeh found yerself a home, and the fact that yer willin' ta give yerself up ta try ta protect it is somethin' ah'm willin' ta accept."

Danté looked down at his hands and found himself wondering how the hell he kept finding people like Dirk. Like Kairi, really.

He didn't deserve them.

Why did they do things like this for him? Didn't they realize that he was just an assassin? A killer?

…Yes.

Danté looked up as Dirk gathered up his drawings and walked away, and he knew full well that Dirk _knew_. Didn't like it, but was willing to accept it.

How did he find people like him?

"You know. I don't think I was actually expecting _that_ to happen," Noishe said.

Danté snorted. "You and me both." He got to his feet, looked around, and decided that cleaning up the mess in what he was quickly coming to call _his_ corner was a good idea. Not that he was really all that interested in doing so. It was just a couple blankets and pillows arranged damn near like a liger nest, but there were a couple books sitting next to it, and some of his planning materials laying around.

So he figured he may as well just go clean it up—best to leave a good example for Lloyd—and then find another book in his wing pack. He still couldn't read the Sylvaranti alphabet all that well, and though he'd bothered to learn it, given that he would definitely need it, he wasn't in any sort of a hurry to really become a master in it.

Which was why Lloyd found him in his corner an hour later with his nose in a book.

"Danté!"

He looked up as Lloyd fell into his lap after tripping on the edge of his blanket nest, and Danté chuckled. "Good afternoon to you, too."

"Why are you always reading? It's boring…" Lloyd asked.

Danté snorted. The book he was reading right now was definitely not child appropriate, he mused, so his initial idea of reading aloud from it was not going to work. Still…

He put the bookmark back into its place, sat the book off to the side, and got Lloyd situated next to him. "It's not that boring."

"The books they make me read at school are."

"Now, see, that's the problem. That's the difference between reading something at school and finding something to read in your off time," Dante said, looking through the small library's worth of books he carried around in his wing pack. Hm, not that… Not this one… Ah.

He pulled out something he'd found in Kairi's bag. It was pretty interesting, and though he wondered if she had ever read it, he had a feeling she'd pulled it off a shelf at some point, stuck it into her bag, and then completely forgotten about it.

He certainly did that often enough.

He started back at the beginning and started reading, noting Lloyd craning his neck to try to look at the words.

"It's not in an alphabet you can read, silly," he said, ruffling Lloyd's hair and showing him.

"Aw…"

Danté just chuckled, went back to the story, and was very much aware of his fully captive audience within a few minutes of finishing the first page.

He wasn't just going to sit here all afternoon though. It was starting to get late, which meant it was about dinner time, and he could cook, even if he wasn't the best cook in the world.

So he finished chapter one, put the book away, and ruffled Lloyd's hair some more when the boy sounded upset that he'd done so.

"What? I thought you didn't like reading?"

Lloyd turned a bit pink. "Well…"

Danté couldn't help but chuckled. "Come on. I'm pretty sure you've still got homework to finish, and I need to make dinner."

It took some serious coercing to get Lloyd to go get his homework, and by the time Danté had dinner on the stove and cooking, he'd managed to help the boy work out three different tricks to getting his homework done faster.

Dirk ran in just as Danté was pulling dinner off the heat, froze, and glanced around.

Noishe, currently taking up Danté's bed—which meant he'd be waking up with white fur all over him, _again_ —Lloyd, sitting at the table bent over his homework, and Danté at the stove.

Dirk blinked and looked up at him, and Danté gave up on glaring a hole through Noishe's head in favor of offering up a small smile.

Dirk gave him a knowing look back and headed over to check up on Lloyd and his almost-finished homework.

The boy was all too happy to forget finishing it in favor of grinning up at Dirk and showing the dwarf everything he'd gotten done so far, and Danté didn't even complain about it as he put together three plates and brought them to the table.

Heh.

It'd been a long time since he'd had a family…

"Ah've got a few ideas for those guns o' yers," Dirk said after a while. "An' ah don't think it'll take me too long ta work 'em out."

Danté sighed. "You've got time. I still have to get back in shape, anyway," he replied.

Lloyd looked up at him. "And teach me!"

Danté snorted and reached over to ruffle the kid's hair, just because it got Lloyd to make that somewhat annoyed face at him. "Yeah. That too. Brat."

Lloyd just smiled up at him, like he saw no problem whatsoever in being a brat, and Danté resisted the urge to smile back.

 _Barely_.

Brat.

Dirk chuckled at the two of them as he finished his dinner. "Thanks fer cookin', Danté."

Danté shrugged. "Figured I'd better make myself useful once in a while. Wouldn't want to get kicked out for leeching."

"Dad, you're not gonna kick him out, are you?" Lloyd asked.

Dirk and Danté both chuckled at Lloyd's question, and Lloyd gave them the most confused look, like he had absolutely no idea what was so funny.

Danté finished his own dinner and put the plate in the sink before walking over to Noishe and picking the protozoan up. It was a bit difficult—Noishe's size made the whole thing awkward, even more so when the arshis woke up as Danté moved him—but nothing Danté had never done to Kallig before.

The gray liger had been fond of stealing his bed, too, and never mind that Kallig was both feral and had a damn nest of his own. Nope. Danté's bed was his bed when he said it was.

Problem was, Danté kinda _needed_ his bed, so he could sleep. And to get to his bed, he had to move the annoying liger, or rather, protozoan.

Noishe gave him an indignant look, even as he plopped down in his blanket nest and shot one right back.

"Mine."

* * *

 ** _Fun Fact:_** _Originally, Dirk wasn't supposed to figure out Dante was an assassin until later, after a certain incident that I shall not name at this time (to avoid spoilers.) However, as I've been doing this version, I find that he catches onto things whether I want him to or not, and then stubbornly plants himself right where he feels he's needed most._

 _Unfortunately for Dante, Dirk is_ still _determined to see him as another child, assassin or no. So... Yeah. This continues to be a trend throughout the story._


	7. Chapter 1-7 Part 7

And... I almost forgot to post.

In my defense, I do have a Christmas present I am rather behind in getting done for my mother, so... yeah. Going back to working on that once this is up. (Knitting in the round, 114 stitches, currently sitting at 28.5 rows out of 78. And then I have to do the lining, because it's a bag. I'll be at it for a bit yet. Thankfully I knit fast.)

Also, to anyone who followed me over from the Ripples Trilogy... Next chapter we see Kairi again... sort of. Ish.

In the meantime, though, enjoy!

* * *

 _Huh, that was a rather pretty bird… Bright yellow little thing. Looked kinda like a flying lemon… -Dante_

* * *

 **Chapter 1.7 - Second Chance  
Part 7**

He wasn't quite sure what he was doing here.

Especially given the fact that the entire village still seemed to recognize him.

Still…

Danté stepped into the same item shop he'd been to before Lloyd had spilled about his being a 'half-elf', and was unsurprised when the clerk immediately jerked, then yelled at him to get out.

Danté offered up as congenial a smile as he could and still stepped up to the counter. "That's rude."

"I don't cater to filthy half-elves! I ought to be demanding what I sold you before back!"

Danté was silent, patient, and when it became obvious that the man wasn't going to bend, he shrugged. "Fine. I'm sure I'll find someone willing to take the gald of a half-elf in Triet. What supplies I've got will get me that far, at least."

He made it to the door, and had it half-opened, before the man could splutter out a 'wait.'

Danté paused and glanced back at him. "If you're not going to sell me anything, don't waste my time."

The man seemed to be at a loss. Then he sighed. "Fine. You did pay last time, I guess."

Danté raised an eyebrow. "Why _wouldn't_ I pay? That would imply stealing, and while I'm a lot of things, I can safely say I'm not a thief."

The man grimaced. "Most of the half-elves on Sylvarant are Desians. They do tend to steal, and though we've got a non-aggression treaty with the ones in the northwest forest, the treaty does nothing to stop them from stealing goods from us on occasion."

Danté stepped back over to the counter, even as he crossed his arms. "Ever consider that some of us might consider the Desians in the same light humans do? Honestly. The only reason I even know I'm a half-elf is because a few Desians called me out on it in the middle of a job. Lost me my meal ticket, and then had the gall to offer to take me in at one of the Ranches. I was _raised_ by a human, why the hell would I be interested in the sort of monstrosities that happen inside those walls?"

The man blinked a few times, then snorted. "I guess it seems stupid to you."

"It really does. On both ends. I don't know what started the whole thing, but I know it takes some sort of trigger for a convoluted system like this to come about. And I've heard…" Danté stopped here and shook his head, as if reluctant to speak the truths Noishe had shared with him. "No. It's rare, I should probably not be spreading it around." He handed over a piece of paper that contained his order. It was almost the exact same as last time. In fact, it was _always_ almost the same. He did try to keep to small orders to try to keep from drawing attention. He hoarded, after all.

"What, don't want to share Desian rumors with a human?" the clerk asked in a joking tone.

Danté grimaced. "They're not rumors… There's…" He stopped, sighed, and forced himself to say it. "There are humans among the Desians, just as there are half-elves living among humans."

The man jerked in shock, and looked up at him, and Danté nodded. "It _happens_. Usually when you get a human kid raised by a Desian."

The man swallowed and finished picking out Danté's order.

As he'd expected, it was only a little more expensive, and that was because he'd added a few things to the usual order. The man didn't try to over-charge him, either.

The items were bagged and handed over, and Danté was once again on his way out when the man spoke up again.

"I'm sorry."

Danté froze and glanced over his shoulder. "Pardon?"

"For getting sucked into the mob mentality," the man clarified. "You've been nothing but polite since you first came to Iselia, and you've been decidedly _patient_ when most men would have lost their temper with me earlier."

Danté shrugged. "I put up with a lot of shit," he replied. "The apology is appreciated and accepted, though."

And then he was stepping out of the little item shop and strolling toward the school.

He made it halfway there before the next problem presented itself.

Another angry villager, another set of insults thrown, and Danté ignored both villager and insults with the same calm façade he'd kept up in the item shop.

He stopped outside the school building and leaned against the wall next to the door, bag still hanging from his arm.

He was there for five minutes before he had three men standing around him.

"Clearly you didn't get the point the last time you were here," one of them said.

"We don't need your filth in the village."

"And we certainly don't need it infecting our kids. Get out!"

Danté looked each one of them in the eye, and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing, eyes drifting around, glancing at the other people who were wandering around.

Almost all of them gave him wary looks. A few didn't seem to care.

There were a few more that were standing back, watching with baited breath to see what would happen.

It was _those_ people that Danté wanted to shoot, really.

Fragging gossip-mongers. He hated small farming villages like Iselia and Engeve. They really had nothing better to do than stand around and look for the next interesting thing to chat about.

"Are you deaf? Get lost, half-elf!" the third man spoke up again. And this time, he got physical, reaching out to shove Danté off-balance.

Danté shifted, easily slipping out of the man's way and allowing him to overbalance and land sprawled face-first on the ground.

He relocated to the other side of the door and leaned against the wall, still pointedly ignoring the trio of idiots.

Hm, now that was interesting. The small crowd had grown to a total of seven now.

And two of those seven were eying him with something other than the usual kind of interest. In fact… they looked like they were waiting to see what happened, if only to figure out how badly they needed to scold the three troublemakers.

Danté nodded to the elderly lady, who was rather clearly a priestess of some kind, and then went back to pretending he gave zero fucks about his surroundings.

Huh, that was a rather pretty bird… Bright yellow little thing. Looked kinda like a flying lemon… hm… Lemons…

"Alright, that's it!"

The three men converged on him, and Danté slipped under the arms of the largest, tucked his bag into a nook between a few tree roots, and then dodged another punch thrown his way.

Heh. These guys really didn't get it, did they?

Dodging wasn't going to get them to lay off, though, so Danté reluctantly proceeded to trip Idiot 2 into Idiot 1, before grabbing Idiot 3 by the back of his shirt, spinning, and releasing him to flop out on top of Idiots 1 & 2.

He then picked up his bag, strolled back over to the school's door, and settled right back into his original spot.

The three got up and moved as if to come after him again, only for the man he'd noticed watching in genuine curiosity earlier step in front of him, arms to his sides in a very clear sign of intervention.

"That's enough."

"Frank!"

"Don't you realize?!"

"He'll take the Chosen!"

Danté snorted. Oh, if he ever figured out what the whole 'Journey of Regeneration' really was, he had no doubts about that. But until then…

"What's the point of kidnapping a four-year-old girl? I have no love of the Desians, and I'm certainly not interested in harming a friend of Lloyd's," he piped up. "Honestly…"

The man who'd stood up for him shot him a look, and Danté couldn't figure out if he was grateful or irritated.

"This man is doing no harm simply standing here," the blonde, probably named Frank if one of the earlier objections had been correct, stated firmly. "In fact, I'd guess he's probably just waiting for school to let out so he can walk Lloyd home and save Dirk a trip." Danté nodded to confirm this. "He's also deliberately avoided conflict with you three."

"He's a rotten half-elf!" Idiot 3 insisted.

Danté sighed. "Oh for fuck's sake. You know I only found out about it myself a few months ago? Yeah, apparently the Desians I was trying to protect my client from weren't really happy about it."

There was a long moment of silence, before the elderly woman he'd nodded to walked over. "You didn't realize you had the blood of elves?"

"Nope. Mother died giving birth, my father was gone before I was born. I was raised by a human, thought _I_ was human up until the Desians got pissed off, and now I'm rather pissed with _them_ , because they've lost me a few thousand gald thanks to yelling it well within earshot of my last client," he replied. "And if they think I'm joining them after they killed Master Ryndor, they're nuts."

Dammit, he hated having to say things like this. He hated _lying_. But this was the story he and Noishe had decided on, so they'd better stick to it.

One of the three men who'd been coming after him looked saddened.

"You're a half-elf yourself… but you've lost just as much to the Desians as the rest of us have, haven't you?"

Danté averted his eyes. If they got ahold of Lloyd…

The door next to him opened, and three children ran out, froze, and then looked around at the gathered crowd.

The next boy out the door was the one Danté had been waiting for, and Lloyd froze just as the first three children had.

Then he noticed Danté, and the man standing in front of him, and the woman next to them.

"Danté?"

"Hey, kiddo. Got your homework?"

Lloyd nodded, still looking a bit surprised, and glanced over the still-angry expressions of most of the villagers around them.

Then he took three steps forward and wrapped his arms around Danté's hips. "'m sorry."

Danté sighed. "Kid… If I ever figure out magic, they'll have worked it out eventually. Come on. Might as well quit terrorizing them by simply _standing_ for the day." He shifted, and Lloyd let go, then managed to grab onto his right hand, the one not carrying the bag of items.

Danté offered up a small smile, but it didn't make the morose expression Lloyd was wearing go away. If anything, it made it worse, and Danté sighed again as they stepped past Frank.

"Thanks," he murmured, loud enough for the blonde man to hear, but not loud enough for anyone else to.

They made it to the gates before Danté noticed that Lloyd had tears dripping down his cheeks.

He sighed. "You know… It's alright."

"No, it's not."

Danté shook his head, let go of Lloyd's hand, and ruffled his hair. "Their reaction is about the norm. I can put up with it. I don't care what _they_ think, you know that, right?" Lloyd looked up at him, and Danté smiled and offered his hand again. "You and Dirk and Noishe accepted me for what I am. You're the only ones that matter. Get it?"

Lloyd hiccoughed a bit. "Yeah…"

"Come on, then. Don't fret over it. If they don't want to get to know me, they don't have to. I can handle anything they throw at me," Danté said. "But Lloyd… if they start going after _you_ … Say something. I can take their scorn. You're still young. You don't deserve to have to put up with it."

Lloyd nodded. "'K…"

Danté sighed and gave up on trying to cheer the boy up. Clearly, he wasn't succeeding, and there was no way he'd be pulling it off anytime soon, with the way he was going.

He just… wasn't meant to be comforting kids.

Noishe met them halfway, looking almost panicked, though he calmed down as he padded along next to them. "Danté! Dirk said you went into town!"

"Yup."

"But—"

"They can't do anything to me that I haven't survived in the past," Danté said, cutting the protozoan off before he could really continue. Noishe's ears laid flat against his head.

"What if they'd gone after _Lloyd_?"

Danté's eyes hardened, and cold green met warm brown. "Then they'd have found out why pissing off an assassin is a bad idea," he replied. "They can come after me. They _will_ leave Lloyd alone."

Noishe side-stepped away from him, and Danté couldn't blame him.

Lloyd looked baffled. "Are you two arguing?"

"Not really. Noishe was being a worry-wort over the whole incident with the villagers," Danté replied.

"I'm sorry…"

"Stop apologizing for something out of your control," Danté said, voice firm. Lloyd looked up at him.

"But _I_ told them."

"You did. But their reactions are not something you can control, and therefore you need to stop apologizing."

Lloyd looked unconvinced still, but at least he stopped arguing.

"Hey. What do you say I teach you a rhyme Rhunön taught me when I was about your age?" Danté said. Lloyd blinked up at him, curious.

"Rhyme about what?"

Danté hummed a little bit. "Something I'd almost forgotten… I thought it was a silly little thing when I was a kid, honestly." And now he had Lloyd's attention. "In the deepest part of the darkest night, drop your weapons, give up the fight, take a deep breath and choose your light, follow it through 'til the angels' flight."

Lloyd looked confused. "Huh?"

"It means, even when everything looks bad, if you've got one thing left that you can put your faith in," Danté paused and squeezed Lloyd's hand a little, "then you've got all you need to keep going."

Lloyd smiled up at him, and tried to recite the poem back at him. Danté corrected him a few times before the boy could say all four lines easily.

By the time they made it back to the house, Lloyd had the four lines memorized, and was putting them to a little tune that Danté didn't _want_ to know where he'd come up with it.

He was just happy that he'd finally figured out the meaning, and that it had apparently been enough to cheer Lloyd back up.

Dirk met them at the door, giving Danté a wary look knowing full well that the teen, despite offering to pick Lloyd up, had probably run into some sort of trouble.

The smirk Danté shot him seemed to reassure the dwarf… for now.

"Have a talk with yeh later, lad?"

Danté nodded and headed for his corner, pulling his purchases out of his bag and stashing them away in his wing pack again as he sat down.

"Ah finished the guns."

Danté froze, then looked up at Dirk hopefully, and the dwarf chuckled. "In mah workshop, on the big table. Ah've got another project ta get started now."

Danté grinned, and was on his feet and headed off with startling speed.

* * *

 ** _Fun Fact:_** _...Just so everyone knows, some of these chapters were written out of order. This is one of them._

 _And Dante has a frightening fixation on lemons. Like, seriously._

 _(He also has the patience of a saint, now that he doesn't have to deal with Zion.)_


	8. Chapter 1-8 Part 8

We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year~

(Except it's not New Year's yet. But, hey, whatever. Enjoy a double-update courtesy of me forgetting to post this one last night.)

* * *

 _"Her hair was so pretty... Looked like a fire..." -Lloyd_

* * *

 **Chapter 1.8 - Second Chance  
Part 8**

Danté woke up to screaming.

He was out of bed and running for Lloyd's room before it even registered that it was odd he'd woken.

Light. Movement. That was what always woke him. Not sounds. Not screaming. Dirk was always the first one to hear Lloyd cry out, and even when Lloyd _didn't_ cry out, the boy knew better than to come into Danté's room.

Danté's room. He actually had a fucking _room_ now, one that Dirk had built behind the stable, and if Danté was being totally honest with himself, he loved it.

Lloyd's room was on the second floor. So was Dirk's.

He found the little boy at Dirk's open door, tear-stained cheeks still getting wetter and Dirk nowhere to be seen.

This must've been one of the nights Dirk chose to go back to the dwarven village in the mountains between here and the Martel Temple, Danté mused as Lloyd looked up at him, looking lost and scared and utterly _horrified_ , like he'd seen the worst humanity had to offer and had just realized that it was out to get him.

Danté was down on one knee before Lloyd moved, but the boy was in his arms the next second, bawling his eyes out and blabbering nonsense that Danté couldn't understand.

Three months, Danté had been here. Sylvarant months, at least.

He'd been preparing to leave tomorrow morning, but with Dirk gone… Well. The dwarf did usually only vanish for the night.

Still.

"Shh… Easy… Shh…"

Lloyd's sobs quietened down to sniffles, and Danté lifted the five-year-old and headed down the stairs, back toward his own room. If nothing else, at least if they were down there, Noishe could poke his head in and make sure Lloyd was alright after the screaming.

And, indeed, Noishe had his head stuck through the open top half of the door that lead straight from Danté's room into the stables. "Is he…?"

"Nightmare, looks like," Danté replied, sitting down on his bed and pulling Lloyd into his lap. It was a bit awkward, especially for him, but there was little else he could do. Lloyd needed someone to cry on while he worked out… whatever this was.

"Lloyd?" Danté whispered the boy's name.

"There was so much blood…"

Blood?!

"Shh… Do you think talking about it might make it easier?" he asked. He knew sometimes it didn't. Sometimes talking about it just made it more real.

"It was so pretty… The sky was all violet-red and the grasses were blues and stuff, and this lady… I've seen her before. She brought me home last time I saw the place with the blue grass," Lloyd started. "She was pretty… And she was gonna bring me home again this time, too, but then… Then…"

And there went the waterworks again.

Weird, though. Why would Lloyd dream of a place with blue grass and a red-violet sky?

"She just started bleeding from everywhere!" Lloyd blurted. "And she was so pretty and nice! Why… why did she…"

"Shh…" Danté awkwardly rocked back and forth a bit, trying to calm Lloyd down. Clearly he needed Dirk here, but Dirk was gone. What a night for the dwarf to choose to leave.

"Her hair was so pretty…" Lloyd continued to murmur, starting to sound like he was literally crying himself to sleep. "Looked like a fire…"

Danté almost froze, but didn't, mostly due to the fact that his momentum had him rocking back and forth automatically.

Hair like fire?

"An orange-gold, with red and just a hint of brown thrown in for kicks?" he asked.

Lloyd was nodding absently against him.

"Green eyes."

"Green an' gold…" Lloyd corrected softly. "There was gold… 'round…" The boy yawned. "'Round the black…"

Danté was silent, sitting there in the dark, rocking back and forth with Lloyd in his lap and wondering how the hell the little boy had dreamed of Kairi.

No. Not dreamed of.

He'd said… It had been a nightmare. There'd been blood. He'd said she'd started bleeding.

"Lloyd…?"

A sniffle was his answer. "Yeah?"

"I don't think it took her down."

Lloyd looked up at him in the faint light cast from the full moon high in the sky outside, and Danté looked down at the boy, one thumb brushing away stray tears. "You think…?"

Danté hummed a bit. "If it's the woman I think it was… She survived the very same explosion that kept me bedridden for almost a week," he replied. "She's been through a lot… and I'm sorry to say some of it, _I_ put her through. If anyone can pull though… it's her."

Lloyd sniffled some more and buried his face in Danté's chest. "Can I stay here tonight?"

…Oh no.

No.

No!

Danté sighed, shifted, and managed to spot the blanket from where it had fallen off the foot of the bed without dislodging Lloyd too badly.

He wouldn't be getting any sleep tonight, it seemed. He didn't dare. Too high a risk of accidentally hurting Lloyd if he did.

"Come on, kiddo. I'm sure the pretty lady didn't mean for you to be up all night crying over her."

"But… What if…"

Danté put a finger to Lloyd's lips, and dug back into his memory, all the way back to when Rhunön had taught him the nightmare game, a game that would do Lloyd no good tonight when Dirk wasn't here. Dirk was the only one Lloyd could play it with, after all, as he couldn't understand Noishe.

It had been years and years and _years_ since he'd actually cared about his birth parents. But he remembered a recurring nightmare from his childhood, where he'd been standing in front of a faceless woman with black hair, and had been begging her to come back, to not abandon him.

He'd lost track of how many times he'd gone to Rhunön—she was less dangerous than Ryndor, less likely to throw things at him and far more likely to get physical—thrown a pillow at her face, waited for the shock to wear off, and proceeded to clamber up into her bed and ask her if she thought his mother had wanted him.

He never actually thought those words would serve him again once he'd gotten past that initial terror of being abandoned. Still, a bit of editing was necessary…

"You said she was trying to get you home, right?"

Lloyd nodded. "She did it before, once. A few months before you came."

Hm… A few months… would have been around when Zion burned down Keterburg, probably. But that was beside the point.

"So she's probably been trying to look out for you," Danté said. "And I knew her. She had the greatest capacity to care and forgive of any woman I have ever met. She was also the most stubborn person in the entire world, and I don't say that lightly." Alright, foundations laid… "That is a woman who loves with everything in her heart… and she _will_ be looking after you. No matter what happens."

Lloyd blinked up at him, offered up a small smile, and then tucked himself into Danté's chest.

The teen sighed, then half-flopped, and enjoyed the startled squawk he got out of Lloyd for the sudden movement. Lloyd shot him an indignant look, and he chuckled. "Come on. Off to sleep with you. Don't want to be asleep when I leave, do you?" he asked.

Heh. Like he was going to be leaving immediately after _this_.

"No," Lloyd murmured.

Danté kept Lloyd tucked against his chest with his left arm, and ran the fingers of his right hand through the boy's hair.

It only took a few minutes for the soothing motions to do their magic, and Lloyd was off to sleep again. Hopefully this time, he wouldn't be waking up from a nightmare.

"I don't understand why you seem to think you're so evil," Noishe mused quietly from where he had put his front paws up on the locked lower half of the door. "You're always so gentle with him."

Danté sighed, and let his head fall against his pillow. "Maybe. But maybe I'm just really bad at being evil. I certainly did a bad job of keeping _her_ captive."

"Who?"

Danté glanced up at Noishe, and in the space of a few moments, managed to come up with a serpent name for Kairi.

"Fithorrior."

Noishe was quiet for a moment, before he tilted his head to the side. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but… Fire-Thorn-Warrior?"

"Fire thorns are poisonous, and beautiful, and usually used by dragon mothers to hide their eggs," Danté replied. "It's fitting, for her."

The silence stretched for long minutes.

"The woman in Lloyd's nightmare. You really knew her?"

Danté nodded. "Her name, in this language, is Kairi Balfour." Yes. _Is_. He refused to even consider using the word 'was' around Kairi. "And she was the one I was trying to save when I found myself here."

Noishe was silent, head laying on his paws even though he was still standing on his back legs, front paws on the half-door. "I'm guessing… not someone you were really friends with?"

Danté shook his head. "No. Far from it. I was sent to capture her, ordered to contain her, and though I managed the first… the second… She slipped away. Got out, got to her brother, and took the whole world in a storm of blood and fire and rage and _love_. I never understood it before, how she could stand to be slaughtering veritable armies one day, and then comforting a broken soul the next. She was broken, and glued back together, and _knew_ it. She _used_ it, took every advantage she had, and either turned it against her enemies, or put that force behind her allies."

"Sounds like someone else I knew… once."

Danté glanced at Noishe, then wriggled a little bit, letting himself get a bit more comfortable. He was going to be here like this, Lloyd wrapped up in his arms, for _hours_. It was barely even midnight, if that.

"So… What happened to her?" Noishe asked.

Danté shook his head. "I didn't know. I cut her loose. She was existing on two worlds at once, the body I cut free was the false one with the real soul. It was her soul that needed saved… I should have died trying to give her the chance at life. The fact that she's showing up now, and that Lloyd's seen her before… It means she at least survived the crystal," he said. "And I wasn't joking. I swear that woman could have out-stubborned a mountain if she'd actually bothered to try. She's alive. She's got too much to live for to bother dying just yet."

Noishe made an odd snorting sound. "Well. I'm sure she'd be glad to know you had such faith in her."

"Tch. As if."

Danté's eyes slid shut, and it took him a moment to realize that he was falling asleep, himself.

He blinked them back open, stared at the wall next to the door out to the stable, and then sighed.

Great. Not only did he have to deal with Lloyd's nightmare tonight, but it looked like this was one of those nights where his body thought he'd already been up for days and he needed to go to sleep.

His body was… off.

So was the calendar on Sylvarant, he mused.

Or… maybe the calendar had to do with why his internal clock was now off?

"You're thinking pretty hard," Noishe said, sounding amused.

Danté didn't bother to grace him with a response.

Sylvarant's calendar was half the length of Auldrant's. His body seemed to be registering the days as being twice the length of what he was used to, and yet…

He was adjusting. It was taking a while, but he was adjusting.

He'd never be able to manage staying up for multiple days at a shot, though. He'd barely been able to manage four on Auldrant. Even with the now screwed up rest cycles, he'd probably never truly adjust enough to manage more than two days straight on Sylvarant.

Brilliant.

He was screwed.

Lloyd yawned a bit in his arms, shifted, and then settled down again, and Danté ran his fingers through the boy's hair some more, idly working out the knots as gently as he could for fear of waking the boy.

He was in far too deep… and didn't even really care anymore.

"Is it too much to ask for me to share the bed too?"

Danté blinked, glanced at Noishe, and sighed. "Sure. Why not. Just do something about the blanket while you're at it," he muttered back, only a little cross at the thought of white fur all over his sheets.

It wasn't as bad as it had been, he had to admit. Noishe, once properly brushed out, bathed, and brushed again, didn't shed very much. He just hadn't been cared for properly before Danté had taken it upon himself to do something other than sit and be bored out of his mind.

Noishe leapt over the door with an almost surprising ease, and then dragged the blanket up so it was well within reach for Danté to adjust it.

Danté ended up laying with his back against Noishe's side, a five-year-old tucked into his front, and the steady rhythm of Noishe's breathing lulling him ever closer to sleep.

He shouldn't have said yes to Noishe. He shouldn't have even considered it, because now he was falling asleep, and…

Danté looked down at the little life curled up in his arms, and attached a word to Lloyd that, four months ago, he wouldn't have attached to _anything_ , except possibly in the context of finding something to kill to distract a target so _they_ were easier to kill.

Precious.

And this precious little life was his to protect for the night, with Dirk gone off to the dwarven village in the mountains north of the house.

Danté managed to stay awake a little longer, purposefully torturing himself with the mental images of all the ways he could kill Lloyd before the morning. All the little things that he wouldn't even notice himself doing in his sleep.

Noishe shifted a little, and stuck his nose against the back of Danté's neck.

The teen shifted, trying to get the cold, wet nose away from sensitive skin without displacing Lloyd too much, and the next thing he knew, he had a furry neck under his head, and a long, fluffy tail laid over his legs.

Danté curled around Lloyd.

Nothing was going to hurt the boy.

 _Nothing_.

Not even him, Danté reassured himself. He'd stay awake until dawn. He'd wait a couple more days to leave, make sure Lloyd was alright and recovering well from the nightmare.

He wasn't going to hurt Lloyd.

He _wasn't_ going to hurt Lloyd.

Danté's eyes slid closed again, even as he repeated the mantra over and over.

' _Not happening.'_

* * *

 ** _Fun_** _ **Fact:** Originally, the timing for this scene didn't line up with when the scene ended up happening in An Echo through Time. After finishing AEtT and starting to edit V2 of ADL, I realized it needed to happen before Dante left instead of after he got back. That said, this scene has been written in one form or another since April 2016, and the ADL half was, in fact, written well before the AEtT half was._


	9. Chapter 1-9 Part 9

Ahhhhh! Chapter 1's over!

XD

Just as an FYI for those of you who didn't follow me over from the Ripples Trilogy, my 'Chapters' are less actual chapters and more story arcs. This means that this arc of the story is over, and Friday will see the next arc beginning...

I'm so excited! Especially since I realized belatedly that something wasn't actually _entirely_ Forcystus' fault. Dante was just being more subtle about it. (Which explains a lot about the relationship between those two. What Dante fails to get across via subtlety, Forcystus then causes to effectively blow up in my face, and then Dante runs damage control to keep me from killing Forcystus.)

Anyway, enjoy!

* * *

 _Lloyd had to have a_ reason _to revenge-sneak, right? -Dante_

* * *

 **Chapter 1.9 - Second Chance  
Part 9**

Danté was very, very aware of a few different things when he woke up.

First, he had Noishe in his bed with him, and was, in fact, using the protozoan's neck as a pillow.

Second, he had something warm curled up against his chest, and he was holding onto it like a lifeline.

Third, Dirk was standing over by the stable door.

Danté blinked himself awake slowly, staring at Dirk for only a moment before his eyes shifted to the warm little body in his arms.

Lloyd was still fast asleep.

Fast asleep, and completely unharmed, despite all of Danté's worries that he wouldn't be waking up if Danté fell asleep.

A tension he hadn't even realized he was holding in his body released, and he damn near fell right back asleep.

Except…

"I'm not sure if you picked a bad night or a good night to leave," Danté said.

"Ah'd say any night ah'm gone that Lloyd has a nightmare is a bad night. But why…" Dirk started.

"He was screaming. You've usually gotten him woken up and mostly calmed down before it wakes me," Danté said. "I was up and running before I even realized what it meant that Lloyd's screaming was what woke me up. And… I don't know how Kairi did it. I choose to lay the blame on her; she's done a lot of strange stuff in the time I've known her. She's been making contact with Lloyd. Not often, but… I don't know what happened to her last night. Whatever it was, it terrified Lloyd."

Dirk looked worried. "You gonna be okay to travel, lad? Or…"

"I'll stay another night or two. After that… Lloyd'll be up again tonight from the memory of this one," Danté replied. "Of that, I have no doubt."

Noishe shifted a little, and Danté moved just enough to see if the protozoan was actually waking up or just threatening to.

Just threatening, it turned out.

He looked over at Dirk again and sighed as Lloyd's hands, fisted around handfuls of his shirt, clenched tighter, refusing to let him go. "I'm probably not making it out of bed for another hour," he added, somewhat irritably. He did actually enjoy his early-morning training sessions before eating breakfast.

Dirk chuckled a bit. "Ah'll hold yer breakfast. Ah know ya like ta work up an appetite first."

Something like that.

Honestly, it was the thrill of racing through the obstacle course in the half-light of pre-dawn that really got his blood flowing, but Dirk didn't need to know that.

Dark had always been a creature of the late afternoon and dusk, melting into the darkness of night and disappearing.

Danté lived for the dawn. He didn't need to hide, he had nothing to hide from. Not Ryndor, not Rhunön, not his replica.

His replica had needed to hide from _him_.

Danté blended into the crowds, ever casual, ever the poisoned needle hiding in the haystack.

The differences between them were amazing… And though they'd shifted, though Dark had become the one who owned the day and Danté slipped through the night, the vast differences had remained.

Even now, despite all their similarities, they stood firm in their differences.

Dark had learned to love the princess, first the love of a friend, then that of a life partner.

Danté was learning to love as a brother and uncle.

Lloyd shifted, sniffed a bit, and then stopped, face scrunching up. Another sniff, and Danté resisted the urge to make any comments about the boy not being a dog. Danté relied heavily on his sense of smell at times, too.

And right now, he knew what was getting to Lloyd.

The scents of the forest. Of salt and hay and the faintest scent of wet dog.

Not the metal and smoke and wood and oil and _earth_ that always clung to Dirk.

Lloyd's eyes opened, and the boy blinked at the black cloth he had clutched in his fists. Then, slowly, oh-so-slowly, Lloyd looked up at him, and Danté offered up a small, hesitant smile. "Morning."

Lloyd stared for a bit before smiling back. "You didn't leave."

"Nope. Not yet. Hard to leave with you attached to my tank top," Danté replied, faintly amused by his own teasing.

Lloyd's grin was almost brighter than the sunlight streaming through the windows. Almost.

"Come on, brat. Dirk's making breakfast."

"Dad's back!" Lloyd realized, apparently having made the same connection Danté had last night past the terror of whatever he'd witnessed happening to Kairi.

Then the boy was gone, tumbling out of bed and racing off to Dirk.

Danté couldn't bring himself to be bitter, or jealous, or angry. Dirk was the boy's first guardian that he could remember, and Danté was, if he was honest, an extra that was more than likely _not_ going to be a good influence on the boy.

He slipped out of the bed himself and eyed Noishe. He really shouldn't have let the damn protozoan into his bed last night, but… well…

He sighed and picked up his boots and socks, padding off toward the living room with bare feet.

 _Silent_ bare feet.

Lloyd jumped when he walked in, as usual when Danté managed to sneak up on him, and then scowled at the black-haired teen.

Danté smirked back unrepentantly.

He knew it would be coming to bite him in the ass again later, when Lloyd had figured out how to walk without making a single sound and the boy was sneaking up on him the way Danté had so loved revenge-sneaking Ryndor, but for now… Well.

Lloyd had to have a _reason_ to revenge-sneak, right? It was a tradition… And one of the ones that Danté was not at all concerned about teaching the boy.

One of the few.

He slipped his boots on and strode out the door, a curious Lloyd following him.

He'd gotten the boy started on his own obstacle course of sorts. None of the fancy airborne flips that Danté tended to do, but the somersaults, cartwheels, and other gymnastics he'd thrown in seemed to be enough for the boy for now.

Lloyd needed to learn his body and its limits before Danté would dare to unleash him on anything more strenuous.

Speaking of strain…

Danté found the sandy spot near the creek and started in on his stretches.

He was only three in when he realized Lloyd was right next to him, doing his own stretches.

Danté chuckled a bit. "Kid, Dirk's almost got breakfast ready."

"You always do this before breakfast," Lloyd pointed out rather succinctly.

Danté nodded. "I do."

"So I wanna do it too."

Danté frowned a bit. He really didn't like letting Lloyd run _his_ course if he wasn't spotting for the kid. Lloyd still stumbled now and then, and even though they'd managed to remove anything potentially deadly from the 'track' and the routine… Well.

He still worried.

"I can spot for him," Noishe said. "You react faster to me howling than to Lloyd yelling, anyway."

That was true.

"Alright. Thanks, Noishe."

"Can I?" Lloyd asked, probably having guessed that Danté was on the fence about the whole thing.

"Yeah. Just remember to stick to your course and the routine. Don't be straying from it. Part of that's going to be me relying on you to be where I expect you to be, too, so I can plan ahead to avoid you if necessary," Danté replied. Lloyd nodded, all serious-faced and determined, and Danté blinked a few times.

Lloyd had _never_ been this serious about any sort of training before, whether it be _this_ training or his homework or the crafting skills Dirk was trying to start imparting early.

"Lloyd…"

"We gonna start?"

Danté blinked, then nodded. "On three. I'll start… oh, about five seconds behind you. That should keep us from crossing paths too much," he said. "Ready? Three, two, one… Go!"

And Lloyd was off running, Noishe padding around to the lookout spot to keep an eye on the boy even as Danté counted down the seconds in his head and then took off running, not _quite_ in the same direction as Lloyd as he headed for the woods and the hanging 'vines'.

He slipped through and among them with an ease he'd trained back into himself over three months here, and by the time he was dashing out of the treeline again, Lloyd was doing what Danté knew was actually the second of two cartwheels on a rather thin board laid out on the ground.

In a few years, that board would be elevated, turned into a balance beam. Danté was currently using a fallen log for that purpose, but Dirk had decided that it would do better as a bench for a little fire pit later on down the road.

Speaking of…

Danté jumped up onto the log and was down its length before anything more than his foot and hand placement could really register.

Then it was the wood pile, one of his favorite obstacles to be vaulting over.

By the time he made it his usual five laps around, Noishe and a panting Lloyd were sitting in the sandy spot, Lloyd finishing up his after-run stretches and watching avidly as Danté jogged over to start doing his own.

It didn't take Lloyd long to speak up.

"Why'd you learn to fight?"

Danté paused, looked down at the boy, and then looked up at the sky as he shifted into the next stretch and actually thought about it.

He'd learned because… because…

Oh. Right.

"I wanted to be able to protect myself so Master Ryndor wouldn't have to worry about me. He was still a part of the Order back then, and he was always gone, so it was a valid concern," Danté said. "Then he came back, and… I guess I just wanted to help him. And he was always complaining about having to fight, so I think I figured he did it a lot…"

Danté looked down at Lloyd and shrugged. "So I learned. Why?"

"You knew that lady from the place with the blue grass, didn't you?"

"Yeah," Danté admitted.

"Why'd she learn to fight?"

Danté raised an eyebrow. "What gave you the impression she could?"

Lloyd shrugged right back at him. "I saw her summon a sword out of nowhere right before she disappeared. Pretty sword. Kinda fitted her, though the colors didn't match. Not even the shades of purple."

Danté couldn't quite stop the chill that ran down his back. "Silver katana, with teal, green, and magenta vines wrapped around the hilt and part of the blade?" he asked. Lloyd nodded, looking up at him with a slight smile. "Silver Clematis." That was the name he'd heard it called, wasn't it?

Fitting, really.

And, Lloyd was right about one thing."Yeah, the magenta and purple just don't quite look right, do they?" he asked. "Anyway, we should head in. Dirk doesn't look too pleased with us for both running out instead of eating breakfast."

Indeed, Dirk was shooting them a half-scowl from the entrance to the house, and though it had more to do with the fact that Lloyd had come out here this early at all and less to do with skipping breakfast, Danté knew that the dwarf wasn't going to call him out on the little fib.

The less they told Lloyd, the longer they could pretend that he was still an innocent that was never going to get involved in Danté's line of work.

He really, really wished that he could keep Lloyd away from the blood and the murder and the shadows that now followed him everywhere.

His dead heart hadn't given a damn about the people he killed.

His beating heart, though? That one cared, at least a little, and it did so love to torture him with the mental image of Lloyd being the one he killed.

Danté forced those mental images away and headed for the house the moment his stretches were done.

He still had a question to answer, he mused as he sat at the table and Dirk put a bowl of oatmeal in front of him.

"Kairi learned to fight to defend herself, and later to protect her friends," Danté said after a bit.

Lloyd looked up at him, then looked at Dirk, him again, Noishe, and off in the distance toward Iselia.

Danté knew what Lloyd was really looking 'at.' Colette. His one and only friend in the village, the Chosen who was apparently destined to save the world or some shitting thing like that.

Danté refused to believe a word of it. There was something else going on, and he was going to get to the bottom of it, not because he gave _that_ much of a damn, but because he worried about the turn Lloyd's mental health might take if the boy lost that one anchor that was about his age. Sure, Danté wasn't more than ten years older than him, but still.

Ten years made for a rather large span of time, and Danté was all too aware of that fact, looking at Lloyd now. The boy had shot up in height over the last few months, had gained a couple of inches, and was looking to be outgrowing Danté by the time he made seventeen.

That was fine—Danté knew he and Dark were both fairly short, anyway, although the replica had been taller by a couple inches due to minor replication glitches and the fact that Dark had gotten plenty of food for the last year or so.

Danté was getting fed now, too, and though he really didn't expect that he'd ever match his replica for height, he knew that he'd at least be getting some of the mass he should have had back.

He wondered idly how long it was going to take him to stop wondering when Lloyd would outgrow him, before he finished his food and sat the bowl away in the sink. He was then off to his room, where he'd be double-checking his bag, his weapons, his clothes, and then making sure to keep Lloyd out of it.

Also, he needed to brush Noishe some more. He'd _seen_ that white fur on his pillow this morning as he and Lloyd had climbed out of bed. He needed to clean up his sheets and pillow, and then brush Noishe again and hope the protozoan stayed out of his bed while he was gone.

Yeah, he realized he should probably just lock the door that led straight out into the stable, but he knew if he did that, Noishe wouldn't be able to get into the main room in time for breakfast, because Dirk tended to keep the front door locked until breakfast was finished, and Noishe couldn't use the back door due to a difference in handles.

So Danté would probably be leaving the door unlocked.

He was going to have so much white fur all over his covers when he came back.

* * *

 _ **Fun Fact:** Dante is ten years and four months older than Lloyd, and, though it's not mentioned here, has just turned sixteen a week previous. Dark, Dante's replica, claimed the date he was created as his birthday (though he stuck to saying he was roughly the same age as Dante), three months after Dante's birthday. (Which, yes, means Dark is still fifteen over on Auldrant to Dante's now-sixteen.)_

 _So, while most of the time there will be an exact ten-year gap between Dante and Lloyd, sometimes it'll look like there's an eleven-year gap there. Also, beware Dark and his birthday. It won't come up for another hundred thousand words, almost, but we're going to have a very confused Lloyd at some point due to it._


	10. Chapter 2-1 Part 10

Yes, I am fully aware that I am behind. In my defense, four things.

First, I'm trying to add words to this thing and fill in the open spaces where Dante keeps jumping around chronologically. (I hate Noctus for getting it into his head that this is perfectly acceptable behavior-it makes things difficult when I'm trying to post this story.)

Second, there were some plot inconsistencies in this chapter (born of aforementioned jumping around) that I had to edit out.

Third... My brain is in coding mode. Nothing but coding gets done when it's in coding mode.

Fourth, and my AEtT readers can attest to this... you'll get everything you're owed eventually. Possibly all in one fell swoop, but eventually. I promise.

Now then... Enjoy. Might put up another tonight, might not. Dunno.

* * *

 _"You have friends for me to meet." -Dante_

* * *

 **Chapter 2.1 - Numb  
Part 10**

The Triet Oasis was hot, and dusty, and bustling.

Danté was amused by the way the place seemed to be an odd cross between Chesedonia and the Zao Desert oasis, looking around and noting all of the gypsy stalls.

He gave the gypsies credit for one thing. They remembered faces all too easily. And for that reason, he wanted nothing to do with them. He wanted the locals, the people who were so used to strangers coming and going that they didn't even notice one more stranger coming and going.

It was nice, being in a town without having to fight with half-elf prejudice again. Iselia was slowly getting better as they came around to the idea that he was sticking around, but for now, at least, Danté still had to argue with one of the shopkeepers over the prices they charged him.

Not that there were many shopkeepers in Iselia at all. Two, actually. A grocer and a little item shop for travelers passing through. And the owner of the latter was _not_ the problem.

Danté been half expecting to have to deal with that here, but it seemed that since he looked human and didn't do anything to dissuade them of the notion that he _was_ human, they treated him like a human.

It was nice.

Especially since he technically _was_ human, and just felt like a half-elf. He and Noishe _still_ hadn't figured that one out.

He crossed his arms and looked around, mulling over his options. Three inns. One was run down and honestly looked ready to fall apart. It would likely be the cheapest, but he wasn't going to stay there. Too high a chance it would be remembered.

The entire point was to blend in.

So, the largest of the inns, he decided. The other one seemed to be more expensive, anyway, though he could tell from the sounds of water and the hanging cloths providing shade over the walled-in back area, it was the most elaborate and probably most comfortable.

He wasn't looking for comfortable. He was looking for a good disguise. And the best disguise was to have none at all.

People saw what they wanted to see. And Danté was a master at making them see what _he_ wanted them to want to see.

A normal mercenary, looking for work, and currently trying to find a place to sleep for the night before he moved on to look for work elsewhere.

He signed in using his real name, Danté Daemione, and then headed up to his room and laid down in the bed for a few moments, making himself familiar with what would be his surroundings for a night.

Then he was on his feet again and striding back out of the inn altogether.

This was where the fun part started. He'd gotten a room for the night, he'd used his real name there, and now he needed to change out of this rather distinctive coat so he could go do assassin business.

Namely, finding himself a contact for an intelligence network.

He glanced through the stalls and found what he was looking for. A simple black coat, albeit longer than he'd have liked, as it was a duster and therefore ankle-length, but it was a simple black coat. So it would serve his purposes.

He was about to simply head off into one of the many nearby alleys with it when he spotted the hat.

Wide-brimmed, black, and it would not only shade his face and neck, it would help hide his eyes.

He went ahead and bought it too.

The man who walked into one end of the alleyway was wearing a rather distinctive tan coat. Distinctive, in that Dirk had somehow managed to add a little of what Danté was quickly starting to call 'dwarven flair' to something very similar to his old coat. Danté gave credit where it was due—at least the dwarf could sew. He certainly couldn't, and he hadn't liked any of the coats he'd looked at in the item shop in Iselia before the townsfolk found out he was a 'half-elf.'

The man who came out the other side was clearly not one to be messed with. The first man's knives were nowhere in sight, nor was a tan coat with too many silver buttons for Danté to bother counting. Instead, a black hat and black hair hid his face, and a black coat swished slightly as he walked, odd silver and black weapons glinting from holsters on his legs.

Danté forced down the urge to smirk as he walked.

It felt _good_ to have his guns back, be walking around in public with them.

Well. Mostly public.

He was sticking to the shadows, the back alleys, and looking for a tavern with a very specific feel to it. There was one in every town with a population over about two thousand, and though the Triet Oasis was barely meeting that mark, it was a merchant's city, a place to stop on the way to Iselia on pilgrimages.

Danté had hated pilgrims back on Auldrant. Here, they were rather useful. Or rather, the geographical location of the Martel Temple was useful, in that it dragged them through a desert he would otherwise be crossing and never bothering to come back through.

If Triet weren't here, he would find it way too cumbersome to keep travelling all the way back to Iselia just to see Lloyd… no matter how far into his heart the little brat had managed to dig.

He finally found the sort of tavern he was looking for, and slipped inside. It was late enough to already have attracted a number of customers, and the bell jingled a bit even as he strode with the utmost confidence straight to the first open seat he could see at the bar that wasn't right between two people.

He settled onto the barstool with a familiar ease, laid his arms one on top of the other on the bar, and leaned forward, tensed and ready to push off and _move_ at the slightest hint of trouble.

The barkeep swallowed and walked over to him. "What'll it be?"

Danté idly considered getting something alcoholic for about three seconds. "Milk, please. And a lemon, if you have any."

The barkeep gave him a bit of an odd look for the lemon comment, but then moved on, and Danté dared a glance around toward the right side of the bar.

Nothing. Dammit.

He glowered at the assortment of beers and whiskeys bottled and set on the wall behind the bar until the barkeep brought him a large glass of milk and three lemon slices.

Wait.

Three lemon slices…?

He glanced up at the man.

Dark eyes darted to the left side of the door, then a spot right behind Danté, then to the corner off behind Danté to his left.

Danté nodded ever-so-slightly, and the man walked away again.

He stuck the first lemon slice in his mouth to suck on for a moment before looking around for a napkin dispenser. They usually had them…

Hm. There's the napkins… and nope. The lady in the corner was _not_ what he was after. Too much gold, too much smug confidence as she looked around. Danté would have said she was linked to the black market back on Auldrant. Slave dealing, most likely.

Here? Far more likely that she worked with Desians. And the vibrant, almost neon purple hair and delicate features helped to lend credence to that theory.

He picked up the wedge he'd dropped and stripped the flesh out, enjoying the extremely tart flavor in his mouth.

So, next one was over toward the door. That was the easy one. He'd been all hunched shoulders and scowls and a request for something decidedly non-alcoholic. So.

He sipped on the milk, then looked over toward the door, as if waiting for it to open.

No, that man wasn't the one he wanted, either. More an information gatherer than the broker he needed. Ratty appearance, but a lithe body underneath it.

Danté sighed a bit to himself.

Now how the hell was he supposed to look behind him without making it obvious what he was doing?

He didn't have to muse over this long, as the barkeep was watching someone behind him, and Danté noted the man who walked up sitting a seat over to his right.

Middle-aged, balding, tanned, sharp eyes, clothes that were neither too nice nor too ratty…

"Usual?" the barkeep asked.

The man nodded, and Danté took another sip of his milk. Interesting... This one was good. He'd noticed the exchange between the barkeep and the assassin, noted the assassin checking off his options, and had decided to spare Danté the trouble of looking directly behind him.

The barkeep brought a glass of whiskey over, and Danté eyed it. "That any good?"

The man next to him shrugged as he sipped on it. "Best in the house. Not that it means much."

"I thought it looked a bit light," Danté mused.

"Bit young to be drinking, aren't you?"

"You do what you have to when it's time to forget," Danté replied. "Life's a harsh mistress." And why the _fuck_ did he just say that? There was no way in _hell—_

"Ah, but is death any easier?"

…Danté was grateful for years and years of perfecting his poker face. Because otherwise, his reaction would have likely gotten him killed.

"Somewhat. It's nicer to be on the blunt end of a knife, at least."

The man next to him smirked. "Rather interesting tavern this one… It's got a few back rooms if you're interested in doing a little… business."

Danté nodded and tipped back the rest of his milk. "I could use a distraction."

The man was off the stool and headed for one of the doors that led away from the main tavern quickly, also leaving the empty glass behind.

Danté took the other two lemon wedges though. Because it would be a _shame_ to waste those.

They made it to the hallway and found an unoccupied room. Danté could tell from the smells and the sounds that most of the rest held prostitutes and their clients.

The man waited until the door was closed to hold out a hand. "Erik Svenson."

"Danté Daemione," Danté replied, just as honest as his new contact. "Though I much prefer to work by Slate." An alias he'd chosen over a week ago.

Erik nodded. "Understandable, in your line of work," he replied. "Your timing is impeccable, really."

Ooh… Danté grinned. Not a nice grin, either. "You have friends for me to meet."

"Two in town, and a couple dozen more scattered to the winds elsewhere," Erik replied, pulling out a set of files and sitting at the table, pointedly giving Danté a seat that would allow him to get out easily if he felt threatened.

Good man. Used to working with assassins.

Danté sat across from him. "How many in your network?" he asked.

"Five, including myself," Erik replied. "Lyla is the closest, took over from her father a year ago. She's in Izoold. Aseroth in Luin, Callum in Asgard, and a young lad named Silas in Palmacosta. His elder brother was supposed to be taking up the trade, but… ah…" Erik shot Danté a grim smile, and Danté returned it.

Their lines of work were always dangerous, and there was no guarantee that any of them would still be alive at the end of the day.

"Do you have a cover, or…"

"Cover, mercenary," Danté replied. Erik's eyebrow rose as incredulousness settled into his expression, and Danté smirked. "I've got a five-year-old brat that's started calling me 'Uncle' every time he actually thinks about it," he said. The smirk faded. "I have to get back to him. Safest route was the one option no one would ever consider, something I used to scoff at myself before I realized that it was the only way to keep that boy safe."

Erik nodded back. "I've got three of my own. One's the same age, other two are older. Oldest wants nothing to do with the business, and I'm not going to push him."

"Lucky you. Master Ryndor didn't get that lucky with me, and I doubt I'll be so lucky with Lloyd."

Erik handed over a folder. "These are the two here in Triet right now. One of them will be moving on tomorrow morning, you may want to go deal with him tonight. The other isn't due to leave for a few days, but…"

"If I kill one, the other might get cowed and run. Easy enough fix; two in one night is fairly simple if they're in the same town," Danté replied. He noted Erik giving him a wary look, but he didn't feel like explaining.

If Erik wanted to believe his confidence was arrogance, let him. So long as the jobs kept coming.

"You planning to run the whole circuit of the five of us, or sticking in this area?" Erik asked.

"Any other assassins in your employ I'll need to be wary of?" Danté asked.

"No, last one we had working for us went and got himself killed by the Desians."

Ah ha.

Danté pointedly didn't mention that he was apparently a half-elf in this world. Best to not get this man and his associates on the 'half-elves are bad' bandwagon that the citizens of Iselia seemed to have all jumped.

"So I get all of that lovely business coming straight my way," he mused.

"Indeed you do," Erik agreed. "Anything else you want to look over, then?"

"How long ago did the last one go?"

"Two months."

Danté winced as something hit him. "I'm guessing a lot of this is backlog."

"Some of it we've had to remove. Monsters, Desians, the client managing to take things into their own hands and either succeeding or getting themselves killed," Erik replied.

"I'm guessing you take a percentage?"

"Based on the payout."

Danté nodded. The percentages wouldn't be much different than what he was used to working with. That much was clear, though he was still reeling over the man recognizing the code phrases _he_ was used to.

"I'll speak to Lyla when I get to Izoold. How long do I have to wait for payment after taking out a target?"

"You get half of it as soon as we can find you. The other half, we get from the client afterwards, take our percentage, and then pass it on next time we see you."

Danté smirked. "Excellent. Any chance you could meet me tomorrow morning on my way out of town?"

Erik chuckled. "I think I can manage. You've booked a room at an inn?"

"Yes, the main one," he replied, once again looking over the files for the two targets here in Triet. Deciding he'd figured out enough, he moved to hand them to Erik, only for the man to wave a hand at him.

"I've got copies," he said. "And the important part, the contact information for the clients, isn't in there anyway."

Danté nodded, stashed the files away, and then strode out of the little back room after a handshake.

"Pleasure to be working with you, Erik."

"And you, Master Slate."

Danté left before the title could really catch in his mind. When it did, though...

 _Master_ Slate.

He was the most experienced assassin still alive in Sylvarant.

Danté swallowed harshly.

* * *

 ** _Fun Fact:_** _Okay. So. The comment last chapter about Dante being subtle where Forcystus whacks me over the head? Right here, this last little section. Also further up, where Dante automatically pops off with a key phrase and Erik replies. So... I'm still annoyed, but then, I'm at the point where I figure I'm not getting anywhere with those two anyway, so... Moving on._

 _(Dante is WAY too fond of lemons.)_


	11. Chapter 2-2 Part 11

Warning for language in this chapter. Though, Danté's got a point. It _is_ a mess...

Erg, my brain hurts. And my hips. And... basically everything.

Have a chapter or two. Or ten. (I owe you guys so much now anyway.) I promise, I will get caught up. Probably right before Camp NaNo starts in April.

* * *

" _Define 'screwed up'." – ?_

* * *

 **Chapter 2.2 – Numb  
Part 11**

Danté wondered idly if Erik had _any_ idea just how old Lyla was.

"Alright, here's the thing," the thirteen-year-old girl started, opening up a set of files and spreading them out in front of him. "What we have here is slave trafficking gone badly."

Oh no.

"Hello clusterfuck. My name is apparently 'mop,'" Danté mused, glancing over the _five_ men and women whose images were laid out in front of him.

Lyla snickered at the comment, then sobered up quickly. "This is the guy that started it all," she said, pointing to an older man with dark hair. "He put out a hit for _this_ guy for kidnapping and raping his daughter." She pointed to the second man, then grimaced and pointed to a woman. "This lady then put out a hit on gentleman A over here for attempting to kidnap and rape _her._ Gentleman B then put out another hit, this one for Lady B, who is supposedly stealing large amounts of funds from him."

Danté sighed. Yup. Clusterfuck.

"Lady B set a hit on Gentleman C for the exact same reason," Lyla continued. "A little research, most of it done by Aifread, the darling, got us the full story. Guy A told the truth, Guy B did kidnap and rape his daughter. Guy B was also telling the truth, Lady B is stealing money from him. Lady A lied, she wasn't raped, she was the one responsible for kidnapping Guy A's daughter in the first place and she thought he saw her, so she's trying to get rid of him. Gentleman C is an innocent scapegoat, he's not on your list of people to kill."

Danté nodded and glanced over the other four. "So. You're not sure who I need to be going after or in what order," he realized.

Lyla heaved a sigh. "Basically. This has been stewing for half a year now, actually. I wouldn't give it to the last guy because he didn't care. He wanted a name and a picture and a price."

Danté rolled his eyes. "Imbeciles." Even before coming to Auldrant, when he was doing whatever he could to make money, he hadn't been so uncaring as to simply take a job and go shoot.

He leaned over the mess and analyzed it.

Guy C was an innocent, and only on the table so he knew the man was involved. Lady A was working with a human trafficking ring, but didn't have a hit on her head. A shame, truly, he hated her type.

Guy A would not be killed because he was also technically an innocent looking for justice.

So… Lady B had a hit on her, and her hit was not going to be carried out. She'd be the first. They could get the payment from Guy B, then he could kill Guy B and get the payment from Guy A.

He outlined that to Lyla, and she nodded, making a couple of notes. Danté watched her for a moment, and then started explaining his logic. She was young, and from the way she acted, she _knew_ it, but she was trying to learn, and she was willing to let the innocents go.

He was going to help her learn the trade properly, and then they wouldn't have to do this again.

Once the order had been worked out, and Danté had himself a short list of people to kill, he started memorizing faces.

Lyla watched him, eyes locked on his face as he prepared for his job.

"You're not that much older than me," she stated after a while.

Danté shook his head. "Sixteen."

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Alone, or with Master Ryndor shadowing me?" he asked. It was a valid question, after all.

"Alone."

"Six years. First solo mission was on my tenth birthday."

He heard Lyla's gasp, but didn't look up. The slave trafficking gone wrong was now dealt with, but it wasn't the only work to be found in Izoold. For a small fishing village, they saw a lot of people coming and going, and there were plenty of people who needed his skillset.

"So… I heard you say something about cover as a mercenary?" Lyla asked. Danté nodded. He hadn't been able to find work in Triet, so he'd come to Izoold alone. "There's this guy, he's been looking for a mercenary willing to take him to Luin for the last month. We don't get a lot of them through here often. Pilgrimages, yes, but those are guarded by men trained by the church."

Danté glanced up. "Any chance you know where I could find him?"

Lyla pulled over a spare bit of paper and scribbled down directions. "Here. This is to his house from here," she said. "Um…"

"Are you just that bored, or are you stalling on something?" Danté wondered.

"I'm honestly not sure what I'm doing at the moment," Lyla admitted. "You're probably the easiest person I've _ever_ had to work with."

Danté eyed her. "That's probably got a lot to do with your age. I'm an assassin. I walk like one, I talk like one, and no one who knows what I am is stupid enough to piss me off. You're just the information broker, and a child still. If I were you, I'd find a knife or something. Even if you can't use it, carrying one will deter a lot of the idiots."

Lyla nodded, accepting his every word and thankfully not taking any offense.

"Anyway, will you need these back?"

"No, Daddy had me helping him with the paperwork side of it _ages_ ago. I know what to do with all the paperwork and everything, it's just… this," Lyla said, gesturing to the table and then him, "that keeps tripping me up."

Danté offered up a small smile. "It gets easier. I'll see what I can help you with whenever I'm through," he said. Lyla nodded.

"Thanks. I'd really rather not go the way my dad did."

Danté nodded and took the files, slipping them into his wing pack and then slipping through the halls of the bar on the docks. He was changed back into his tan coat before he even stepped out into the main room, and then he was gone, out of the bar and strolling away from the docks. The woman he was looking for wouldn't be down here, not with the majority of the boats refusing to sail to Palmacosta.

He headed for the small inn instead.

Heh. Inn. Barely. Danté hated tiny towns like these, they had no concept of privacy for the people who were just passing through.

A single large room with many beds, and a small reception desk where you could pay to spend the night.

It was open, and public, and to be frank, Danté hated it.

He glanced around and noticed a woman in the corner. Older, not really looking like the type that belonged in these parts, but also not seeming interested in moving on. One of his targets, and possibly the most dangerous.

She seemed to notice him looking. "What do you want, boy?"

"Just trying to find my next meal," Danté replied, calm but sounding _almost_ testy under it.

The woman sneered at him and turned her back, and Danté used the excuse to leave again.

Well. At least now he'd made an impression with her. He had a feeling he'd need her to have her guard down.

For now…

He wandered off toward the docks, following the instructions Lyla had given him.

The man in question was a fisherman. Native to Izoold, older, and honestly, if Danté hadn't been told to ask for a Donald Thurman, he wouldn't have realized this was the man he was looking for.

"Need something, lad?" the fisherman asked. Danté guessed him to be in his forties, early fifties?

"I heard you were looking for a mercenary," he said.

Donald was quiet for a moment, eying him, the obvious knife at his hip, and the less obvious throwing knife sets strapped to his arms that his coat sleeves didn't _quite_ cover properly.

That was fine. In this coat, he was a mercenary, not an assassin.

"Bit young to be living that kind of a life, aren't you?"

Danté shrugged. "You play the hand life deals you. If it's a crappy hand, you tend to either die or survive. Frankly, I'm rather fond of living."

The man chuckled a bit. "That… I can respect that. Would you be willing to escort me to Luin, then? I can pay you. Give me two days; I can make it an even four thousand."

Danté didn't _quite_ let the incredulity slip.

Four thousand was impressive for a poor fisherman, in this economy, asking an escort to take him just two hundred miles north.

"Given the distance, I'd have only asked half that," Danté admitted.

"I can't really fight," Donald said. "And I'm not going to be the fastest on the road."

Ah. The extra money was to keep him from complaining.

Danté nodded. "Alright. You said two days?"

"Yes. I can leave as soon as you're ready on the third day."

Danté nodded again. "I'll see you then. Think I'll go see if I can scrounge up anything to keep myself occupied in the meantime."

Donald looked thoughtful. "You might want to go talk to George. He brought in a pretty good haul this morning, might need some help. His son's been sick here lately."

Danté raised an eyebrow. "Who am I looking for, and where?"

Donald gestured down the line of docks. "Third dock from the southern edge, George Gumm. He's about my age."

The assassin-playing-mercenary nodded and turned to head off. "Thanks."

"Thank _you_ ," Donald replied.

Danté found the right boat pretty easily, and after a bit of questioning on both ends, he did manage to find himself work with George, at least for a few hours.

Normally, he'd have killed his targets as quickly as possible, but since he and Donald weren't leaving few a couple days…

Although…

The inn was quiet when he made up his mind.

Danté smirked to himself, set up a really bad mockery of a body using his pillows, and then slipped out the nearest window, black coat barely making a sound behind him and wide-rimmed hat shading his eyes.

Hmm… he needed to find a scarf. Something he could use to hide his face. Preferably gray.

If he couldn't deter Lloyd, the gray scarf could be his personal calling card, make sure they'd be distinguished.

It took him two hours to find the correct house where his first target of the night was staying. The gunshot would wake up anyone in the vicinity, but until they started associating the sound with Danté's kills, they wouldn't be able to really trace him.

The first shot made, he took off for the woman involved in the slave trafficking mess. That was two. He aimed to make three tonight, the three most likely to leave as soon as possible.

The last one was a fairly easy catch, still strolling along the streets in the dark, and Danté made the final shot before tucking his gun away and racing back to the inn.

His bed hadn't been disturbed, and no one really looked like they'd been roused…

He was changed and tucked under his covers hours before the dawn brought the first sounds of panicked screaming, and though they woke Danté, it was an easy thing to scowl and narrow his eyes at the obvious work of an assassin.

Mercenaries and assassins never ran in the same circles. He really didn't have to act much, either.

Just treat the news of an assassin with the same derision he'd previously pointed at mercenaries.

He ran into Donald around midday again, and the older man was happy to point him to a few other fishermen willing to pay a little for some extra muscle.

Lyla found him on the docks around dinnertime, and shoved a bag of gald in his hand. "Here. The gald you asked for."

Danté smirked at her. "I'll have you paid back in a few months," he said. Lyla snorted, but the glint in her eyes said she knew exactly what they were doing, and she wasn't just doing her best to _pretend_ she knew what she was doing.

"Right. A few months."

"I've got a couple jobs lined up," Danté said. "Iselia and Triet are horrible for that. I'll have you paid back in no time. At least now I know better than to go all the way out there."

Lyla grinned. "Just remember to give me the interest, too."

And Danté got the hidden message there, too.

"You got it."

She turned and walked off, and Danté wasn't sitting there long before a young woman walked up.

"Are you sure that was a good idea? I know Lyla and her father loan money to a lot of people, but…" the woman started.

"I've got a good job," Danté said. "I just made a poor estimation of how much I'd need to get to Iselia and back without changing up my habits too much."

The woman eyed him. "Just be careful. The last three people who didn't pay Lyla and her father back were offed by an assassin."

Danté rolled his eyes. "I'll be fine."

Apparently the woman didn't believe him, but the expression she wore as she walked away was telling—she thought he was going to get himself killed for not paying back a loan shark.

Well, that was her problem. And really, it wasn't a loan. It was Danté's payment for killing the three from the previous night. He still had one more he needed to kill though, one he'd left out the previous night knowing full well that killing _her_ and not blowing his cover would be impossible.

He idly wondered how old a half-elf had to be to actually _look_ old.

"Mercenary work and loans at your age?"

Ooh, speaking of his target…

Danté glanced up at the older woman he'd seen the day before at the inn. "You have a problem with it?"

The woman eyed him.

"You should go to one of the Ranches."

Danté fought down a scowl. "Oh?"

"You're young still, unlearned. The humans will never accept you as one of their own."

"They don't have to. I don't give a fuck what they think," Danté replied. "There's only one human I care about, and he's a five-year-old boy that doesn't deserve to get caught in the crossfire."

The woman raised an eyebrow. "Half-brother?"

"Nephew," Danté replied. "By adoption. The whole little family's a bit screwed up."

And now he had his target amused. And sitting down on the barrel next to him. "Define 'screwed up'."

"My adoptive brother's a dwarf, his adoptive son is a human, we have a 'pet' that's actually an intelligent protozoan, and I'm a half-elf."

The woman smiled. "Screwed up, indeed."

Danté nodded.

* * *

 _ **Fun Fact:**_ _Lyla holds the distinction of being the only (current) member of the information network who is a canon character._


	12. Chapter 2-3 Part 12

...

-hides-

...

-pushes another chapter out-

Edit: And this is why I need to not be half-asleep when checking over chapters. V01d ended up semi-beta-reading for me.

* * *

" _Might as well kill two birds with one stone… or two basilisks, I guess." –Danté_

* * *

 **Chapter 2.3 – Numb  
Part 12**

Danté looked around Luin, watching idly as Donald walked around, talking to people here and there and trying to track down his daughter.

Danté wondered idly if the old fisherman was maybe a bit late to be trying to do that. Apparently the woman had been gone for a little over a decade now. The chances that she was still in Luin were slim, if she'd left Izoold.

Though, he had to give credit to one thing. Luin was _full_ of lovely little hiding places.

He'd found so many of his targets already, and he wondered for a moment how he was going to get away with this one. He certainly couldn't kill them all in one night. And he couldn't stay for too long. Sure, he'd snuck away from a camp three walking hours out from Luin the night before they'd come and killed a couple of his targets, but he knew that there was little chance he'd be able to keep it up.

A man who was clearly a half-elf walked up to him.

Danté said 'clearly,' because the man had brown eyes, but startlingly white hair, and he could just spot pointed ears past the straight hair. He was too bulkily-built to be a full-blooded elf, though.

"Strange spot to be standing around," the man said.

Danté looked at him, then looked around the marketplace again. True, he had a bit of a bubble around him because he was just standing here, and most of the people in the area were bustling to and fro, but really.

"Don't mind me. Just trying to figure out if I'll be keeping a client, or if I need to find a new one."

"Mm. Mercenary?"

Danté nodded, and the man made a bit of a face and moved to walk off.

"Aseroth?"

The half-elf froze, then turned to look at him. "How did you know my name?"

"Erik told me."

There was a long moment's pause.

Then Aseroth frowned. "You're a mercenary?"

Danté smirked. "When there's a five-year-old to be kept out of the line of fire? You do whatever you have to."

Aseroth nodded a concession to this, then paused. "And a fellow half-elf. Though… Hm. You've got more human blood and less elven blood. Somewhat backwards from me."

Danté raised an eyebrow, and the man shrugged. "Mother was an elf. Father a half-elf."

That explained a lot.

"I wouldn't know my parentage. Mine were both dead or gone within a few days of my birth, and I was raised by a human. He never realized I was a half-elf, and neither did I, until a few Desians got pissed at me for getting in their way," he said.

"Erk. Don't remind me."

"So… Did anyone find my friends from last night?"

Aseroth chuckled a bit. "Oh, yes. I'm not sure what the hell you used that created those wounds, but they were found this morning. The mayor's been in a bit of a tizzy, but three dead in one night is nothing new. We have a Ranch fairly close, they've been known to come take or kill people in the night before."

Danté nodded. "That particular method is my usual… I'll switch it up on occasion. You'd be amazed the wonders a little variance in MO can do, but…"

"Let me know beforehand, if possible. You're aware that there's still about a dozen, right?"

Danté nodded. "Might have to make a couple passes. I didn't get into town until about an hour ago, so hopefully I've set the worst of the suspicion off. Did something similar in Izoold, left, and _then_ got the last one. But…" He shrugged. "That many… The problem with backlogs is that you can't really clear it out without attracting attention."

Aseroth nodded. "If you have to save some for a second or even third pass, you're welcome to. I've lost the last person close to me in the last Desian raid, but I know what it's like to fight with keeping someone safe." The man paused and glanced around. "At any rate, if you're looking for work, I'd head over to the mayor's office. He's got a board just inside the door, people post jobs on it all the time. Most of it gets ignored, since there aren't a lot of people willing to go contend with the monsters outside the city, and it's kind of make-work stuff, I'm sure, but…"

"Work is work," Danté said. "And if nothing else, it gets my name out there a little better. The more people know of me, the less time I have to waste trying to _find_ work. It'll come find me."

Aseroth nodded again and wandered off, and Danté started asking around for the Mayor's office.

It didn't take long for him to find it, and just as Aseroth had said, there was a bulletin board with notices posted all over it, people looking for someone to do things here and there.

"Need some help?"

Danté looked over his shoulder at the young woman standing behind him, then looked over the board again. "Just kinda cataloguing things for the moment."

There was a decided pause, before…

"You're a mercenary, aren't you?" Danté nodded at the question. "I'm guessing a rather bored mercenary."

"It's hard finding work when you're just starting out," Danté admitted. "And I'm of the opinion that work is work."

The woman giggled, then pulled one of the notices down.

One of the monster-related ones that actually had to do with the monsters. Specifically, basilisk scales.

Danté knew they'd been considered valuable back on Auldrant, especially outside of the Zao Desert area, but for her to pull that one down…

"Basilisks, huh?"

She smiled and shrugged. "I don't know how many antidotes you've got on you. Might want to stock up before you head out. But the woman who put this one up is known to talk. A _lot_."

Danté smirked. "Thanks for the pointer."

She grinned a bit, then gestured to the notice to the left of the board, a notice that Danté had only barely glanced at, just long enough to confirm that he'd only be able to take two of the jobs at a time.

Didn't mean he couldn't do a couple of these collection jobs while doing the others. He'd just save the herbs and items until he could actually _take_ the jobs.

"The basilisks tend to hunt around north of here. You'll need to be careful, the Human Ranch is to the north-east. But there are a few other things in that general area… Hm…"

Danté pointed to another one that had to do with basilisks. Specifically, a nest of them near a spring. "Might as well kill two birds with one stone… or two basilisks, I guess."

The woman giggled a bit. "Yeah, that'll do." Then she paused. "It'll take you pretty close to the Ranch, though. You sure… They haven't attacked us recently, so they're probably planning one. I wouldn't put it past them to be keeping a close eye out for anyone wandering outside the town to grab up," she said.

Danté sighed. "If I was afraid of the Desians, I wouldn't _live_ within half an hour's walk of a Ranch."

The woman stared at him, and he shrugged. "The Iselian Ranch. They've got a treaty with Iselia, but… I don't know if that applies to me, Dirk, and Lloyd or not. We're almost an hour's walk out of town."

The woman grimaced. "I guess… you do what you have to in order to survive," she said. "Even if it means developing what others might consider really _weird_ responses to threats." She pulled down the second note and walked over to her desk, clearly used to having to do this even though it was obvious that the jobs didn't get taken on often.

She handed him the two papers detailing the jobs after she'd taken a few notes down. "Good luck. And again, you may want to go stock up on antidotes," she said.

Danté nodded. "Thanks." Then he slipped the papers into a pocket and left, headed back toward the marketplace.

Antidotes weren't something he carried on himself often, mostly because he tended to stock up on panaceas.

However, he was running low on those, and he could not for the life of him _find_ panaceas in Sylvarant. So he'd have to get the antidotes.

Now stocked up and ready to take on the basilisks, Danté headed for the exit to town.

"Found more work?"

He stopped, glanced at the old man he'd brought here, and then nodded. "Yeah. Make-work stuff again. I'll probably be around Luin for a bit. But at least I've got work again. I hate having nothing to do."

Donald smiled a bit. "Might see you around then. I think I might have gotten a lead on where Anna went after here," he said.

Danté nodded and started walking.

He was almost an hour out of town when he finally realized something.

Anna.

That was Lloyd's _mother's_ name.

Danté shoved the thought aside rather violently. Anna was a common name, it was very unlikely that the woman Donald was looking for was the one buried behind Dirk's house.

A hissing sound drew his attention back to the mission at hand, and Danté scowled at the basilisk that was hissing at him. Hissing, but not attacking. That was never a good sign.

If he was getting warned off, that meant the basilisk wasn't willing to simply leave if it looked like it was going to lose a fight.

The only time monsters became that territorial was if there were eggs involved.

Danté drew his knives and eyed the foliage around them. There had to be another basilisk or two running around. Had to, because they never worked alone, not if there were eggs to be protected.

He threw one knife, then shot forward when the basilisk dodged it.

Fighting with short-range weapons was always dangerous against an enemy like this, but he couldn't risk using his guns, not right now, and certainly not when he had a limited number of cartridges with him. Dirk had been so very apologetic that he couldn't get the mana cartridges done by the time Danté left, but Danté had reassured him that it was fine.

He could get them when he came back. For now, using the knives would help keep people from suspecting.

He couldn't afford to waste bullets on these things.

He barely managed to avoid getting bitten by a second basilisk when it shot out of the nearest bush, but he twisted out of the way of its attack and hit an eye.

It wasn't a fatal wound, but it would mess with the monster's depth perception if one eye was gone.

He'd have preferred blinding the thing, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and he was pretty sure there was still another one lurking around somewhere.

Another couple of thrown knives distracted the basilisks, and he managed to bury a knife deeply enough through the eye of the not-previously-injured basilisk to kill it.

Then he had to deal with the injured one.

Huh. Nothing else was jumping out of the bushes to kill him.

Yet.

He only _barely_ managed to kill the second one without it sinking its fangs into him, and he started collecting up his knives, even as he started testing scales to see if there were any loose enough he could pry them free. There was a very specific point where it was best to pull scales, and it was very difficult to find a basilisk with a scale loose enough to be pulled away, because they were so very good at pulling them out themselves.

The pulled scales would then be _eaten_ , making finding shed scales impossible.

Danté gave up on the two he'd already killed. No scales off of these two.

There were eggs in the area.

That sobering thought in mind, he checked the bush the second basilisk had come out of. No eggs, no sign of an underground den, no more basilisks ready to come jumping out at him.

He moved on.

There was nothing here, so he'd have to keep looking.

He killed four more basilisks before he managed to get a single scale off of one, and he sighed.

"Well. Guess it's a good thing that basilisks breed well. I'm going to be at this for hours." And probably part of the next day, really, Danté realized. It was already well into the afternoon, and the longer it took him to _find_ the basilisks, the longer it would take him to get the scales.

He idly tucked the thought away and headed off, looking for more.

If he was going to be out here looking for the rest of the day, he might as well actually be looking and not sitting around. They knew something was hunting them now, the last basilisk he'd killed had screeched loud enough to wake the dead—or at least anyone sleeping in Luin or the Ranch.

He was wary every time he found a basilisk, though. Most of them came at him in groups of three or four.

He became very, _very_ grateful for the woman's advice, and also grateful that he'd actually accepted it, because even though he was being careful, even though he was using them fairly sparingly, he was still running through antidotes as he hunted.

He finally collected the last scale he needed almost an hour after getting rid of the nest that was restricting access to the spring, and apparently just in the nick of time. Danté glanced around, got to his feet, and then took off running back toward Luin. He wasn't expecting to make it all the way back, but he was out of antidotes, so he didn't really want to get caught by more of the damn things.

He needed to save his panacea bottles for as long as he could, it looked like.

Five basilisk scales and a nest exterminated. He doubted that the basilisks would leave the spring alone for long, but at least for a few months, the spring was safer.

Safer. Not safe, nothing was ever safe, but safer. And that might have had something to do with why Danté felt pretty good when he walked back into town just as the sun was setting.

He'd managed to get the damn scales before nightfall, and hadn't still been at it in the morning.

He made a beeline for the mayor's office, wondering if the lady from earlier was still there or not.

The office was open until an hour after dark, according to the sign, so he wasn't surprised when he was able to enter easily.

"You're back."

The woman sounded vaguely surprised, and Danté dug out five of the six basilisk scales he'd managed to get. The last two had been pure luck—one of the basilisks hadn't preened recently, apparently, as he'd pulled them both off the same lizard.

"And done."

The woman beamed up at him.

* * *

 _ **Fun Fact:**_ _I've had the name 'Aseroth' floating around in my head for ages. It was finally assigned to one of the random OCs I knew Danté would have to contend with, and I realized quickly that it would have to be a half-elf, because he insisted on white hair. Sadly, while I've come to really enjoy having Aseroth in my head (though it's rather dangerous listening to him, Yuan, Jade, and Reighn all snarking at each other), he doesn't get as much screen time as I'd like. :( Why?! Why did you have to run off on me Aseroth?!_


	13. Chapter 2-4 Part 13

Also, Imma Rocket with a pink Dratini.

-is shot-

* * *

" _I don't speak bird." –Danté_

* * *

 **Chapter 2.4 – Numb  
Part 13**

Luin was in chaos.

Danté had just been taking a nap in his room at the inn when the yelling and screaming and shouting had started. He'd woken to the smell of fire, and though the inn wasn't burning, the building next to it was, and that meant it would probably be spreading to the inn soon as well.

So he was out of his bed, grabbing his things, and racing down the steps and out the door in seconds.

Once he was outside, he spotted the Desians.

That… explained a lot.

The mayor's secretary, Michelle, had said time and time again that the Desians had been quiet for a while, and now it looked like they were raiding Luin. And a raid meant ransacking buildings and capturing as many people as possible.

Danté slipped into an alleyway, changed coats, and had his hat and new scarf on by the time he was racing out into the pandemonium again.

This… was actually perfect.

He had a very unique MO. Something Aseroth would be able to catch and confirm on every target he killed. Sure, he'd killed a few people in the last couple days in a different manner, but that was because, as he kept telling people, a little variance in MO was a good way to throw the investigators off.

Still.

Chaos.

Danté knew his targets. Knew every one of their faces, knew how they'd be reacting to this raid, and he managed to get four of the remaining seven before _anyone_ noticed him.

The first person to try to come after him was a Desian.

A quick move had the Desian's head facing backwards, and Danté moved on, sliding through the alleys and alcoves with a surprising ease.

Five and six went down easily enough.

Then came the difficult shot.

The seventh was sitting in a cart filled with captured humans, and Danté couldn't be sure that he'd successfully hit the man from street level.

He spotted a barrel and a low-hanging roof, and a plan formed in his mind.

Get up on the roof. Shoot from there.

He was up, in position, and taking aim a minute later.

The final shot rang through the air, and Danté slipped down off the roof, then took a convoluted path out of the city, out toward the Ranch.

It might have sounded a bit silly, but hiding closer to the Ranch just made more sense to him than trying to run the opposite direction. Slipping under noses, hiding in plain sight… These were the sorts of skills he'd learned from Ryndor, and they'd certainly kept him alive this far. He was trained to _survive_ , and there was no way in hell he was going to forget that anytime soon. Not when there was so much at stake.

Lloyd. Noishe. Dirk, even.

Danté clambered up a tree and carefully slipped out of his coat, hat, and scarf.

Dark gray, almost a dark _silver_ color.

He smiled at it a bit and tucked it all away in his wing pack. Then he pulled his usual tan coat on, fiddling with a few of the buttons as he settled in to wait for the insanity to die down some.

He wasn't up there for long before a problem presented itself.

"So. Are you planning to stay up there all day, or are you going to be nice and come down for me?"

He glanced toward the ground and groaned.

Silver armor, blue jacket, whip curled up at her hip, and arms crossed. The helmet made it hard to see her face, but Danté got the feeling she was glaring at him. Which wouldn't have bothered him at all, except for the fact that he wasn't interested in getting involved with Desians.

And he had a feeling the woman would cast something fire-elemental at him if he didn't move. It'd be a good way to get him out of the tree. The tree would be on fire, so of course he wouldn't want to stay in it anymore.

He crossed his arms and glared back.

She shifted into an obvious casting stance, and he rolled his eyes and jumped down, damn near landing on her when she didn't initially move.

She scowled at him, and had just gotten her whip out when she froze. "You're a half-elf."

Danté rolled his eyes again. "Thank you, captain obvious."

"Hey, you _looked_ completely human."

"Clearly. That's why I made it almost sixteen years totally oblivious to the fact that I was a half-elf. Thank you."

The woman growled at him. Outright _growled_. And not something complimentary, either.

Danté just chuckled a bit. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'll just find myself a new tree and try to stay well out of everyone's way. And I swear to any deities that feel like listening, if you guys lost me out on my paycheck _again_ , I'm really not going to be happy."

There was a bit of a pause as he walked off.

Sadly, he didn't make it very far before the woman caught up to him.

"You're the assassin."

 _The_ assassin.

Shit.

"And if I am?"

There was a slight sigh of relief. "Kvar could use someone with your skills," she said.

Hm.

"How about… why?" Danté said, editing his word choice at the last minute. He'd intended to say 'no', but…

"He needs an assassin. Hasn't had the time to try to figure out how to train one properly and still be managing the half a dozen projects he's got going," the woman replied. "And I'll bet, if you'd rather remain a freelancer, he'd be willing to work around that as well… just so long as he doesn't have to deal with a human."

Danté glanced over at her. "I'll consider it."

The woman gave him an amused look. "You sure you only want to consider?"

Danté scowled and shot her a warning look, and she raised her hands in the universal sign of surrender. "I'd like to see how many of my kills I'll be missing out on the payments for, thank you. I'm headed for Asgard next, anyway."

The woman nodded. "I'll make sure the guards know to look for you, then. Sometime the next week? The last thing we need is them letting in random humans."

Danté rolled his eyes. "Give me three days."

"Can I get a name for you, then?" she asked.

"Slate," he shot back. Might as well give the Desians the same name he'd given Erik and his cohorts.

"Arianna. Tell the guards I told you to come by when you do stop in."

And then she was breaking off from him and heading her own way. Danté was grateful. He really didn't want to get involved with the Desians, but if it had to be done… Well. There needed to be some serious consideration going on _first_.

He found himself another tree and managed to clamber up into it, settling in and thinking it over.

On the up side, he'd have access to the Ranches and a means to hopefully get Lloyd out of them if the boy ever did get caught. He'd probably also have an excuse to see if he could actually learn magic, or if mana was going to be forever beyond him.

On the down side… Desians.

He was sitting up there, still trying to figure out if it was a good idea or not, when he heard a squawk and had to look over to figure out what in the world had made that sound.

He understood liger, and therefore most growl-based languages because of that. The art of translating screeches, though, was something he had never learned.

The bird was mostly white.

White, with violet accents at the ends of its tail and wing feathers. It had a crest on its head, and that was violet, too.

He tilted his head to the side and looked at the bird curiously. It was large. About the same size as Arietta's hresvelgr, though not quite so bulky. More… delicate?

"Hello."

The bird chirped in response.

"I don't speak bird," he stated bluntly.

The bird tilted its head at him, and then hopped a little closer, onto the branch Danté was sitting on.

Danté noted pretty, ice blue eyes.

 _Intelligent_ blue eyes.

He stared for a bit, looking over the bird's patterning again.

"You're a protozoan, aren't you?"

The bird nodded, very deliberately, and Danté sat back against the tree trunk in a slight shock.

Another protozoan.

Noishe had thought he was one of the last protozoans, possibly _the_ last, and yet, here was this pretty purple bird…

Aeros. This was an aeros-form protozoan.

Danté shifted a little and held out a hand.

The aeros hopped forward a bit, sniffed at the offered hand like any dog would, and then ducked its head a bit, allowing Danté to run a hand over its crest.

The pretty purple feathers just stuck right back up, and Danté chuckled. It was rather cute, really.

He hummed. "Well. I suppose I should probably _learn_ bird-monster speech, shouldn't I?" he said. The aeros looked at him curiously, then chirp-chirred.

Huh. Now that he listened, it almost sounded like…

He growled back, using the exact same inflections and tones, just an octave lower and in a clear growl.

"Probably."

The aeros jumped a bit and looked at him, and he smirked a bit.

"What? I was raised with a liger. And Noishe is an arshis-form, so…" He stopped and shrugged, running his fingers between feathers on the back of the aeros' head and getting anything that was already loose pulled free.

The bird looked grateful to him for the attention. It chirped out what, from the inflection, was clearly a question.

Danté wasn't used to working with a totally different-sounding 'voice.'

Growling his way through the question helped, though. _"What does Noishe mean?"_

"It's old elven," Danté replied once he was sure of the question. "Something to do with wind."

The aeros looked curious. The next comment had Danté at a loss for a long few moments.

Mostly because nothing that growled could make that chirring sound.

The bird looked a little disappointed, but seemed determined not to give up, and tried again, a bit slower.

Danté substituted the chittering for a hissing noise similar to what cats made. Noishe used whines, Danté was used to the hiss due to that being the default of the ligers.

Given that the sentence he 'translated' came out something along the lines of _'My name is Niflysobir,'_ he guessed that he'd found the right substitute.

A little inquiry got the aeros' full name—Night-flying-song-bird. A fitting enough name, given the song-like quality to its 'voice'.

Hm.

"You're female, aren't you?"

Niflysobir nodded, looking amused. Danté hummed a bit to himself, continuing to run his fingers through the soft, downy feathers on her back.

It was a pretty name, for a monster. He hadn't met a lot of monsters named for their voices. Mostly fur, feathers, or habits.

In fact…

He sighed. "It's pretty. Proniheice is my own, as far as monster names go." An inquisitive chirp had him flinching. "Prowler-of-the-night-with-the-heart-of-ice. Admittedly, that ice has started to thaw, but… That's been my name for as long as I've known it... It feels wrong to change it now."

Niflysobir crooned, a comforting sound that had Danté smiling at her again, even as his hand came up again without any loose down. "I think I've gotten everything on the back of your neck," he mused.

She twisted her head, then did a little shimmy, fluffing her feathers and then letting them smooth down again naturally. She looked up at him and chirped out a thanks. Then she paused, looked him over, and tilted her head to the side.

She considered him for a moment before taking off, and Danté watched her go wistfully. Noishe was wonderful, but… he needed to protect Lloyd.

Niflysobir was a flier, a night-flyer at that, and… honestly, sitting here with her, talking to her, had been relaxing.

He needed to find himself a partner again. He'd gotten so used to Kallig being there, even when Kallig hadn't really been… _there_.

A large shadow passed over him, and he barely glanced up in time to catch something as Niflysobir dropped it.

 _It_ was… a bag?

He peeked inside, and blinked at the items within. It looked almost like a traveler had dropped the bag at some point, except… some of this…

He pulled out a knife. It was beautiful, really, with a pale blue gem in the pommel and a silver hilt. There was an inscription on the blade that he couldn't read, but given the familiar runes, he knew Dirk would.

The thing was, it was beautiful, but _practical_. Just fancy enough to pass for ceremonial if it had to, but sturdy, and _sharp_. And he could see the little whetstone inside the bag as well.

He looked up at the aeros sitting in a branch well above him again, and she warbled out what passed for a sentence in her language.

It took him a moment to translate it.

" _It belonged to my former partner. I think it's high time it have a new owner."_

Danté swallowed. "Are you sure…?"

Niflysobir nodded her head, and then took off again, flying away.

Danté sheathed the dagger and slipped it back into the bag. Medicines he'd never dare use, since they were so old. A couple of maps that confused the hell out of him as they were not only _not_ in the common language of Sylvarant, but also one of them appeared to be of a totally different world. The dagger and the things to maintain it.

And… that, if he wasn't too mistaken, was a book on spells.

Danté sat there, staring at the cover of the book for a long time, before his eyes drifted off to his right, toward the ranch.

Pros, he'd know the ranches. He'd probably get to learn some magic, and he'd have an in with the Desians.

Cons… He'd be working with slavers.

Danté shoved the spellbook back into the bag, slipped it into his wing pack, and then climbed down out of the tree.

He needed to go to the ranch, he decided.

It wasn't the best course of action, probably, but it was a course of action. For right that moment, however, he needed to head back to Luin and see how bad the damage was. Because if he could help to enforce the idea that he was an innocent, it would make passing back and forth between all his different little worlds so much easier.

A mercenary, an assassin… and soon, apparently, a Desian.

Danté couldn't quite stop himself from flinching at that thought, even though he'd made up his mind that it was the best he was going to get.

He couldn't let this get any more tangled up. Dirk already knew he was an assassin, Lloyd would find out eventually, he had no doubt.

He could _not_ lose Lloyd in the crossfire.

* * *

 _ **Fun Fact:**_ _Niflysobir wrote herself into version 2, and then stubbornly stayed there. Then when I started version 3, she snuck right past me and firmly planted herself right on top of Danté... who was too amused to help me shove her back to the chapter where she originally was meant to show up._

 _I give up on fighting with her. Her and Noishe both._

 _(Also... I keep forgetting about that spellbook. Not that it matters much...)_


	14. Chapter 2-5 Part 14

I would like to apologize to all of my readers.

I am about to go on a posting hiatus. I do not know how long it will last.

I effectively screwed myself over (like I always seem to do), and while there is a slim chance I can get my job back, it is highly likely that it is going to take me months or even years to get back into a good (here meaning non-temporary) position working within the State of Illinois.

While I will continue to work on this story and the rest of my current works-in-progress (writing can be very therapeutic at times, and I sense this is one of those times where I will need it), I may not get around to posting more for many months.

However, should an occasion present itself where I can begin posting a backlog of chapters, I will ensure that I keep track of exactly where I _should_ have been, and these chapters _will_ be posted if at all possible.

I am sorry. I have been constantly berating myself for allowing this to happen, but until I am once again earning a suitable income, I am stepping away from much of my extracurricular work.

However, in keeping with the site's rules about not posting entire chapters of author's notes (and my own guilty conscience), I'll at least be kind enough to leave one last chapter.

* * *

" _What, didn't you want to see your present?" –Danté_

* * *

 **Chapter 2.5 – Numb  
Part 14**

Arianna met him at the entrance of the Ranch, wearing a smirk to offset his scowl.

Not that she really seemed to care. Still, Danté wanted to make sure everyone knew he was not in a good mood.

He'd lost one of his kills. More specifically, the one the Desians had rounded up before he could kill the man.

He was _not_ pleased.

She led him through the Ranch, straight to the control room, and though they garnered odd looks along the way, most of the half-elves simply let it go. Either they noticed his mana signature, or they realized he was with their companion and the two were on a mission. Regardless, they left him alone.

When they stepped into the control room, off of the warp pad that had brought them there—and Danté decided rather quickly that he _didn't_ like those things—they had the eyes of every Desian in the room on them, including a platinum-blonde man whose fancier uniform indicated that he was the one in charge.

Danté scowled at him too, and was unsurprised when the man scoffed. "Honestly. Dragging in the rabble now?"

Green eyes narrowed at… red? Hm, interesting… Still.

"He's a half-elf, Kvar. Well… Maybe not _half_ … but he's got enough elven blood for it to show, and I think you'd be rather interested in his skillset… seeing as we brought in a corpse he was supposed to be making money off of."

There was a rather long pause as Kvar blinked at her, before his eyes shot over to Danté, widening a fraction.

Danté's scowl didn't budge.

Kvar nodded. "Thank you, Arianna. Come. This isn't the place to be discussing this," he said, giving Danté a pointed look before turning and striding into what appeared to be an office.

Danté followed him carefully. He was wary of backstabbing, of course, but at the same time, the half-elf seemed to have realized that he was likely going to be able to get out of the Ranch without help.

He'd be leaving one hell of a lot of bodies behind, though… Danté _hated_ being sloppy.

The door closed behind him and Kvar, but didn't lock.

Hm. Wise of him.

Danté crossed his arms and continued to scowl, because this was the last place he wanted to be at the moment.

"You're the assassin that killed one of the humans my men had rounded up?" Kvar asked.

"I am," Danté confirmed. "I'd assumed they'd simply dump the body and leave it for my client and contact to find."

Kvar hummed. "Hammond reported that there were a number of similar kills through the city during the raid."

"I've got a kid I'm trying to take care of, the last thing I need is to get caught," Danté said. "I'd _been_ spreading the kills out some. Figured I might as well use the cover from the raid's chaos to finish off my little list."

Kvar was silent for a while. "You're a bit young to be procreating."

"Nephew."

Understanding replaced suspicion. Then Kvar took a deep breath. "I'll keep this short and simple, then. I need someone I can get in and out of the other ranches. Some of it will be your usual line of work… More importantly, I need someone who can get me information, and make sure that there won't be any credible trails leading back to my ranch." A small pause, and a wry smirk. "Trails are inevitable, since you won't be operating entirely from the shadows. But if the other Grand Cardinals can't prove anything, we're in the clear."

Danté crossed his arms, tilted his head to the side, and considered it.

His skillset was suited toward quick, get in, get out infiltrations… and from Kvar's posture, that was actually _exactly_ what the man needed. Not a true undercover agent, just… Someone who was willing to go the extra mile to get information the sleepers might not have a chance at getting.

He raised an eyebrow. "An interesting proposition. A little bit outside my normal modus operandi… but not so far as to make my current skills a hindrance."

Kvar nodded. "I'm guessing that's a large part of why Arianna brought you here. She's been running most of my intelligence network for the last year. She knows what I need. I'll be honest—I'm not quite comfortable working with an assassin. However…"

"Given your lack of options, it sounds like you've been backed into a corner," Danté mused. "Alright. I'll bite. What do you need out of me… and how long am I going to be away from my nephew? Because while I'll be more than happy to make my excuses, I'd really rather they not find out about the details."

Kvar's expression was well-guarded, Danté had to give him credit for that. But his relief was damn near palpable.

"Given that you're not already living in a Ranch, and that your elven blood is fairly diluted, I'd guess that you'll need trained in basic Ranch operations before I can even _dare_ send you out." Oddly, this didn't seem to annoy the man too much. "That said, it _will_ take me a few months to get the people I'd need here to train you. Most of them are out and about. And given the nature of the assignments you'd be receiving, you wouldn't actually spend that much time within the Ranches."

Good.

Danté shifted his weight from one foot to the other and gave Kvar an expectant look. "So. You got a timeline for me?"

Kvar was quiet for a moment, watching him consideringly. "I get the feeling asking which town you call home isn't going to get me anywhere." Danté narrowed his eyes at him in response. "Not surprised. You do have a child to protect, and I'm not a fool. Getting on your bad side is not something I'm interested in doing. So. It will take me about three months to get Jemma out of Rodyle's Ranch without him noticing."

Danté glanced at the ceiling as he did the math in his head. "As long as my Izoold contact's guy comes through, making it back by then won't be a problem. Should be able to hold over at home for a few weeks, too. That'll make the brat happy. How long am I going to be gone when I leave again?"

"That will depend mostly on how long it takes you to pick up the skills you'll need to be infiltrating the Ranches," Kvar answered. "Most people take about four months, but some of that training, you've already got. Best estimate would be three months."

Danté nodded. Three months would mean he'd be making a longer trip out the second time, but that was something he'd have to get Lloyd used to. When he left, there could be no guarantee of how long he'd be gone… Though that shouldn't stop him from sending a letter back.

Huh.

There was an idea.

He'd have to muse over it more later.

"Noted," he said.

Kvar was quiet for a bit, before he sighed. "You mentioned a contact earlier, so I assume you have a network you keep in contact with for the humans." Danté nodded. "Is there one in Luin?" Danté nodded again. "Give his name to Arianna when you return for training, I'll send messages through her. If you're to maintain your cover among the humans, it would be best if you weren't seen coming and going from the Ranch too often. That also gives you time to warn _them_."

Well thought-out.

Danté smirked. "I think we might have an accord."

The Desian smirked back, seeming to have realized that Danté was now much less likely to simply kill him right here. "I believe so. Three months, then?"

Danté nodded. "Yes."

"Oh, and about that corpse my men dragged in…"

"I am not dragging a three-day-old corpse back to Luin."

"I was going to offer the head. It's been wrapped and boxed. I figured, if you did show up, you might want to be able to prove that you made the kill. Whatever you're using, the kills are very distinctively _yours_ , at least."

Danté nodded. A head, wrapped up and boxed, he would take. A whole corpse, though, tended to be a pain in the ass to deal with.

Kvar gestured to the door. "I'll send a message for someone to go get it. I believe Arianna is still in the control room; she'll show you out."

Danté smirked a bit, nodded, and then let himself out of the half-elf's office still wearing his smirk.

He knew he had most of the Desians in the room watching him warily, but he didn't care, pointedly striding over to Arianna and tapping her on the shoulder.

She looked at him, blinked, smirked back, and then walked over to the warp.

They were almost to the exit when she spoke up again. "I'm sorry if you felt I was pressuring you too much," she said. "It's just… I wanted to be able to do the job Kvar's going to have you doing." Danté glanced at her confusedly, and she crossed her arms. "I've got two daughters. One's mine, the other's adopted… and _human_. I'm terrified they've been taken into one of the other Ranches. I want to be able to look, but…"

Danté raised an eyebrow at her for a moment, before realizing that he was taking this opportunity for much the same reason she'd wanted it.

"I've got an adoptive nephew who's human. He's five right now, going on six. The last thing I want is for him to end up in one of these," he replied. The woman stopped and looked at him. Really _looked._

And when she pulled her helmet off, revealing blonde hair, violet eyes, pointed ears, and a scar down her cheek that only narrowly missed her eye, he had the feeling he'd just dug himself another grave.

Like he needed more.

"Alice. Allienne. Allienne would be about the same age as your nephew. Alice is younger, just a couple years old. She's got my blonde hair. Allie has dark hair. I'd go find a picture, but…"

Danté glanced at the main building, then toward the gate, then looked at Arianna again. "I'll be back in three months to deal with training," he said. Then he sighed. "I might as well look."

Arianna offered up a small smile, then pulled her helmet back on and walked over to the gates to get Danté signed out.

"Be careful on the roads. Last thing we need is for you to get picked up before you've got some kind of identification," Arianna said.

Danté smirked. "I've got plenty of identification. They're just not going to survive it, sadly."

She snorted. "Try not to kill too many of us?"

"No promises. I don't take kindly to getting attacked." He shifted and raised an eyebrow at her. "You're lucky _you_ walked away."

Arianna nodded a concession to that, then frowned. "What are you waiting for?"

"Me, I'd guess."

A second Desian ran up, a box tucked under one arm. Perfect size for a head. Danté accepted the box, nodded to the two of them, and then strode off. Though, he wasn't _quite_ out of hearing range when he heard a baffled Arianna ask her companion what had been in the box.

Danté almost wished he could turn back and see her face when she got the answer. But he needed to keep moving, and getting back to Luin as quickly as possible was his first mission.

Then he needed to move on. He'd overstayed his welcome in this area, he felt. He needed to make sure that he kept moving, didn't stay in one spot for too long. Much as the mayor's secretary was coming to like him, he had other things needed done, and he was starting to get attention as a mercenary as well, mostly because he was tenacious and skilled enough to kill just about anything, as long as he had the time to prepare.

He made it back to Luin just as the sun was setting, and found Aseroth easily. The half-elf was leaning against the railing of one of the bridges, watching the sunset.

"How romantic," Danté muttered.

Aseroth turned just enough to scowl at him before turning away again.

"What, didn't you want to see your present?"

There was a moment of silence before the man turned to give him an incredulous look. "Excuse me?"

Danté held out his boxed head, and Aseroth took it warily, opening it slowly and wrinkling his nose when the scent of something dead hit it.

The man recognized the head, though.

And the bullet hole through his skull.

"Huh. Where did you get this?" he asked.

"Asgard Ranch."

Aseroth glanced up at him, wary and _worried_.

Danté crossed his arms. "I wasn't keen on going, but Kvar's cut me a deal I'm willing to take. He's planning to send everything through you guys, if you're willing to put up with one of his Desians running messages around."

Aseroth gave him an almost suspicious look, but then took a deep breath. "You get us screwed over, I promise you I will make sure your nephew ends up in that Ranch."

Danté hissed. "Threats aren't necessary. I already know full well what I'm risking…" He paused and rolled his eyes. "Besides. Kvar's training me to infiltrate the other Ranches. I'm sure he'll be amused if I end up turning that around on _his_ ass." Which was about as close as he was ever going to get to outright telling Aseroth that if any one of the network got caught, he'd get them out just as surely as he'd rescue Lloyd.

From the look the man was giving him, he'd gotten the point.

"Give me six hours, I'll have your payment. You leaving as soon as you have it, or once the sun's actually up in the sky?" he asked.

"I figured I'd ask around, see if anyone needed an escort to Asgard. If I can't find anything, though, I'm leaving at noon," he said. "Need to get moving."

Aseroth nodded. "Callum in Asgard. I'm not sure if he's planning to pass the reins to one of his kids, or the half-elf he's adopted, but given that the man's been sick for a few months now, you may want to talk to all three of the kids while you're there. Just… get a feel for who you'll probably be working with in a few years."

Danté grimaced slightly. "It's bad enough that Lyla's still technically a child. Now these kids?"

Aseroth shrugged. "The eldest is… hm. Ten? They shouldn't have to take over that soon, mind you. Callum should hold out another decade almost, but if he doesn't, at least they're being trained." There was a pause as he frowned. "How old _is_ Lyla, anyway? Her letters make her seem… well. Older than you, at least."

"Three years younger, in fact," Danté replied. "And bossy. And very, very skilled. She just needs some experience, and maybe a guiding hand here and there when a slave trafficking deal goes south and she has to clean up."

* * *

 _ **Fun Fact:**_ _Writing Kvar in these earlier chapters is HARD. It gets easier later (around where I've left off writing, chronologically, so roughly six years down the line in-story), but that's because by then, he and Danté have been working with each other for years._

 _I guess the good news is, at this juncture, Danté deals with Arianna and the rest of Kvar's network more than he deals with Kvar himself._

 _(Also, I actually had to edit a spot here. Originally I'd had one set of ages planned out for Callum's kids, but then a certain someone (-glares at Callum's adopted half-elf-) gave me that familiar 'We got you again silly authoress' smirk and said "Nope." So the eldest went from being eight to ten.)_


End file.
